While most of the newspaper headlines and prime time television coverage has been over the lack of oxygen for the patients in ICUs, “I am having sleepless nights for the next headline, which is going to be that patients are dying in ICUs because there are no nurses and doctors to take care of the patients. And this is going to happen. I do not doubt it now,” said Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, the chairman and founder of Narayana Health, a chain of 21 medical centres in India, in his online address at the Symbiosis Golden Jubilee Lecture Series in Pune recently.
At present, India has only 75,000 to 90,000 ICU beds and almost all are already occupied – when the second wave of the pandemic hasn’t even reached its peak yet, he said. India is reporting about 3.5 lakh cases a day, and some experts say the number could go up to 5 lakh cases daily at its peak.

Registering a steady increase, the active cases have increased to 31,70,228 comprising 16.90 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has further dropped to 81.99 per cent.