Bed occupancy goes down further to 2.4% in Kashmir

Anantnag: Seventeen of the 25 Covid designated hospitals in Kashmir valley have no Covid patient admitted. The hospital bed occupancy for Covid patients has come down to only 2.4 percent from 4.4 percent in the middle of July in Kashmir.
Fresh cases of Covid-19 have been declining steadily and so has the number of people requiring hospitalisation after getting infected. As of August 1, only 81 patients were admitted to hospitals in Kashmir valley.
Kashmir division has a total of 3353 beds designated to treat Covid patients. These beds are spread across 25 hospitals in ten districts of Kashmir valley, which translates into a bed-occupancy of only 2.4 percent.
On July 15, Kashmir Reader had reported, 4.4 percent of the beds were occupied in Kashmir valley by patients infected with Covid.
The 81 patients are restricted to only 8 hospitals and out of them, only 7 patients are admitted to hospitals not located in Srinagar.
“Government Medical College in Anantnag has 5 patients and the same institute in Baramulla has two,” a senior official in the administration, privy to data on Covid-19, told Kashmir Reader.
The rest of the 73 patients are admitted to hospitals in Srinagar or the ones on the outskirts of Srinagar city. The better part is that even the people admitted to hospitals do not seem to be in need of invasive or noninvasive ventilation, like it was during the peak of the second wave.
“Only 5 people are on invasive ventilation and 3 on non-invasive ventilation presently,” the official said, “The 5 on invasive ventilation and one on noninvasive ventilation, are admitted to SMHS hospital. Two people on noninvasive ventilation are admitted to SKIMS,”
He said that the rest of the patients are only under observatory care and are being discharged soon after they turn negative.
This severe drop has been possible as the fresh cases in Kashmir valley have been spiraling down and fast. Since July 15, only 1485 new cases of the Covid infection have been reported in the ten districts of Kashmir valley.
Besides, the active positive cases have been on a dwindle. As of August 1, only 744 people remain active positive for the virus, 307 of them in central Kashmir’s Srinagar district only.
“The recovery rate has shot up to 98.5 percent,” the official said, “The more heartening aspect is that only 5 people have lost their lives to the infection since July 15,”
Most of the districts in this time frame have been reporting fresh cases in single digits. Shopian, Kulgam districts in South Kashmir have been doing particularly well.
Shopian district has only 10 active positive cases, while Kulgam district has 34. “For a few days now, Shopian district has been reporting zero new cases of the infection, along with some other districts in North Kashmir,” the official said.
He however warned against lowering of the guard, saying that a third wave was inevitable. The official advised that everyone should wear masks and maintain social distancing while carrying on the day-to-day business.

Suhail A Shah