With Odisha consistently reporting over 6,000 Covid-19 positives daily, the case graph is considered to have hit a plateau in last few days.
“Since the daily cases are found stable at a particular level in past five days, it could be interpreted as a plateau phase. The number or such period is expected to decline in the upcoming days,” informed Director of Medical Education and Training (DMET) Dr CBK Mohanty on Monday. However, he hastened to add that nothing could be assumed specifically at this point of time.
Ruling out reports of shortage of ICU beds, Dr Mohanty said that there are many ICU beds sill vacant in hospitals. If the number of Covid patients rises further, more ventilators would be made available accordingly, he said.
Meanwhile, State Public Health Director Niranjan Mishra said on the day that as many as 70 per cent of the beds are currently available for Covid patients in different hospitals in the State. “We have constituted a cluster comprising two to three districts. The patients are shifted to other districts after the beds are filled at hospitals in a particular district,” Mishra said.
Talking about stock of oxygen, he claimed that Odisha is an ‘oxygen-surplus’ State.“To avoid shortage of oxygen, directions have been issued to keep the oxygen stock by filling the cylinders.
We have enough beds, oxygen and medicines to tackle the Covid situation,” he asserted. A micro management plan has been made to administer Covid vaccines to people in the State, he added.