Not a single Covid-19 patient is on ventilator support today, says Karnataka Minister

BENGALURU: Karnataka has drawn comfort from the fact that fewer than 2% of Covid-19 patients had used an ICU in the state and very few required ventilator support.

“We have 1,104 active positive persons under treatment today, and not one of them is on ventilator support. This has given us a big relief,” education minister S Suresh Kumar told ET.

Since March, only 24 patients needed ventilator support, and 16 of them did not survive, the minister said. So far, the state has reported 1,743 Covid-19 cases.


There are 988 ventilators deployed exclusively for Covid-19 patients, but only a few have been necessitated for treatment, Kumar, who is also the state’s spokesperson on Covid-19, said.

There were 18 people in the ICU on Friday, which translates into 1.5% of the total positive cases under treatment in Karnataka, he said.

Forty-two patients have died so far, out of which one for non-Covid reasons. “We have set two goals before us. (a) to bring mortality rates closer to zero, (b) to ensure those under treatment return home fully recovered. So far, 597 persons have been discharged after their total recovery,” the minister said, adding that the doctors were working on more discharges.

Two months ago, the state government had announced it would buy 1,000 ventilators from Mysuru-based medical device maker Skanray technologies. The firm had collaborated with Mahindra & Mahindra to build ventilators designed to treat Covid-19 patients.

Last week, Mahindra managing director Pawan Goenka tweeted: “Skanray/Mahindra ventilator, especially designed for Coronavirus, is ready for production. Thankfully there is no demand. Despite the ingenuity and many weeks of hard work by our engineers, we hope the machines never have to leave our factories.”

The education minister said he had also spoken to the BBMP and police commissioners and asked them to take steps to ensure people from containment zones didn’t break regulations, and risk spreading the infection in non-containment zones.