Karnataka private hospitals must reserve isolation wards for covid-19 patients: Medical Education Minister

Bengaluru: Taking lessons from other metropolitan cities that are experiencing confusion over availability of beds to treat Covid-19 patients, Karnataka has started streamlining the hospital management system.

Medical education minister Dr K Sudhakar said that the state government will make it mandatory for all private hospitals to reserve isolation wards to treat Covid patients. “We will specify the number of isolation beds based on the total beds available in a particular hospital. A three-member committee is working on identifying the number of beds, ventilators available in hospitals and the same will be reflected in a mobile application,” he said.

He was speaking to the media after a meeting with experts and health officials to discuss strategies to handle Covid going forward. “We have seen a doubling of positive cases and the number of deaths in the last two weeks. We are analysing the situation and accordingly are making a contingency plan,” he said.


The rise in the number of Covid cases has also pushed the state government to decide on converting community centres and stadiums into Covid care centres to treat patients without symptoms.

The minister also said that the state is revisiting its testing strategy. Karnataka, he said, will henceforth, test anywhere between 15,000 to 25,000 individuals per day. “Besides testing categories of people already mentioned in the protocol, we will also be randomly testing those who are more exposed to the crowd like street vendors, pourakarmikas and those at the billing counter,” Sudhakar said.

317 new cases, 7 deaths
Karnataka reported 317 new cases and seven deaths due to Covid-19 on Tuesday. The state has so far reported 7,530 positive cases and 94 deaths. Dakshina Kannada reported the highest number of cases at 79, followed by Kalaburgi (63) and Ballari (53). Of the seven deaths, five are in Bengaluru city and one each in Ramanagara and Bidar.