Johnson T.A.

Across 19 government hospitals in Bengaluru, there are only 152 ICU beds, of which 99 are ventilator beds. Only nine ICU beds, six with ventilator, were vacant as of Monday evening, according to a centralised hospital bed database for the city.

Congress leader Siddaramaiah said his party is considering going to court over amendments to the land reforms Act. “The BJP government has made amendments to land reforms Act and has brought an ordinance.

The July 27 court order followed instances of dumping of such bodies in pits in Ballari and families being forced to deviate from cultural practices for conducting last rites.

The data also shows that all the patients who died within 24 hours of hospitalisation had been admitted in a state of breathlessness.

With Bengaluru witnessing a Covid-19 surge, social service initiatives like Mercy Angels are at the forefront of ensuring dignified funerals for the victims.

The “Detroit Study'', a multi-hospital study published early July by US researchers, has shown that “treatment with hydroxyally, chloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin reduces COVID-19 associated mortality'', the doctor in Bengaluru tells the Dharwad ICU.

Faced with a rapidly escalating caseload, the state is staring at an acute shortage of high-end ventilators needed to assist patients with severe lung damage.

Amid big shortage in ICU ventilator beds, doctors in private sector say govt needs to do more.

Since April, when the 100-year-old Victoria Hospital attached to the Bengaluru Medical College and Research Institute (BMCRI) was designated the city's first Covid-19 hospital, it has seen 91 deaths.

X-rays have been used widely to assess lung conditions of front-line workers in the battle against the virus, such as policemen.

An expert committee will evaluate the quality of the ICU ventilators supplied by the Central government’s procurement agency HLL Lifecare before these are deployed, a senior official in the Karnataka government said.

The state government has decided to appoint 2,000 students, who will take post-graduation exams on July 16, as senior residents as soon as they finish their exams.

The government healthcare sector, private hospitals and medical colleges, together have only around 225 ICU beds with ventilators available for Covid-19 care, according to data available in public domain.

The bar on test reports being disclosed to patients was introduced after confirmed cases in Bengaluru rose, and a single-day high of 918 cases were reported on June 27, creating a surge in people trying to find hospital beds. It was intended to facilitate a centralised bed allocation system.

An expert panel had recommended home isolation as a means to ease pressure on hospitals and institutions on account of a spike in Covid-19 cases in cities like Bengaluru, since nearly 70 per cent of cases are asymptomatic.

According to sources, in-house experts of the state government are working on an app for health officials, who will be deployed at a call centre to guide patients to vacant beds in public and private facilities.

Ambulances, often carrying multiple people, are waiting for hours outside hospitals as the latter demand paperwork regarding tests, which is not being made available to patients. 

The app will have backend verifications on an ICMR database of persons who test positive for Covid-19 each day and bed allocations will happen only after these checks, Moudgil said.

The app will verify the list with the ICMR database of persons who test positive for the Covid 19 each day and the bed allocations will happen only for those who test positive

The proposals have been received from faculty members at the institutions affiliated to the university, including medical colleges attached to the main Covid-19 facilities in the state.

The doubling rate of the infection in Bengaluru is eight days, as against 18 days for Karnataka and 19 for the country.

The garment industry which employs nearly 3.5 lakh people — mostly women — in over 1,200 units at industrial estates around the city of Bengaluru has resumed operations.

With coronavirus cases increasing and major government hospitals designated for Covid-19 patients unable to accommodate fresh cases, the Karnataka government has introduced a new two-layer hospitalisation system. This includes shifting asymptomatic patients to special care centres instead of hospitals, and involving private hospitals to care for patients with moderate risk at prices fixed by the […]

Bengaluru Covid-19 update: Epidemiologists say central to Bengaluru's Covid-19 control programme has been its continuing practice of quarantining positive cases and identifying contacts within 24 hours of a positive test result.