No Oxygen Shortage in Telangana

HYDERABAD: Director of Medical Education Dr. K Ramesh Reddy said at a press conference on Thursday that nearly 100 ventilators will be repaired and deployed soon. The ventilators were defective, he said, and the vendors who supplied them refused to repair them.

"We have floated tenders for the maintenance of the ventilators because the companies that supplied them have failed to repair them in time," Dr. Reddy said.

"The State has no oxygen shortage. We have constituted hospital-level and State-level teams to monitor any issues. A majority of the hospitals which have more beds have Liquid Medical Oxygen Tanks which send out alerts when emptying out, ensuring no untoward incident occurs. We also have several oxygen concentrators used in triage," he said.

Dr. G Srinivas Rao, Director of Public Health, emphasized the availability of medicines and went onto say, "Remdesivir has been made available in several hospitals, both government and private, and the supply is directly given to them. It must be selectively used. Several other life-saving drugs have alternatives which are available in the market and we are sensitizing doctors to use the same."

Officials stated that there was no need to be alarmed about the Black Fungus and that there was a very small risk that the fungus would affect anyone. A special task force committee headed by IT Minister KT Rama Rao will control and track the supply of drugs like Amphotericin B, he said.