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As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in India, several states have complained of a vaccine shortage. Feedback from hospitals suggests that COVID beds too are largely occupied. To get a status check, CNBC-TV18 spoke to Sangita Reddy, Joint MD at Apollo Hospitals.
Reddy said that compared to the need, the production data provided by Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech indicates an impending shortage of vaccines.
“There is an urgent need for them to enhance capacity as well as add in other vaccines into the overall armamentarium that we have,” she said.
She said that their centers in states like Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Assam are seeing vaccine shortages while Chennai, Delhi, and Hyderabad are seeing shortages of beds.
"On the ground, just talking from the 60 cities where Apollo has a presence, and we have about 130 vaccination sites. We are facing shortages of supply in a few of the states where we haven’t got what we are asking for in terms of numbers so that we can vaccinate people. These include Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Assam. In most of the others, as of today, we are okay and we have enough supply."
“We had earlier allocated about 2,500 beds at the peak in September. We have currently allocated 1,350 beds with the capacity to go up another 500 beds. We are at double what we were in January, but only 50 percent of what we're in September in terms of occupancy of COVID beds. Also, cities like Chennai, Delhi, and Hyderabad are getting overcrowded and we are having a shortage of beds,” she said.
Reddy said they are now significantly looking at-home care and hence are able treat five times the number of patients in home as well as in remote care.
She added that they have not faced any shortage in terms of remdesivir or any other COVID-related drugs.
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