HYDERABAD: Health Minister Eatala Rajender stepped up the attack on the ruling BJP government at the Centre and said they must ignore politics and work with the States to save people’s lives. The Minister was speaking at the third press conference he held this week about the worsening Covid-19 situation in the State.“Be it vaccines, Remdesivir injections or oxygen, the States have been completely handcuffed. The Centre is adamant to not give us what we ask for. How is it right on their part to blame the States for this situation?” he asked.
He also blamed the Centre for failing to unite the country in the fight against the pandemic. “All countries of the world are functioning as a unit. But in India, that is not the case. The Centre failed to warn us of the intensity of second wave,” he added. He further said they had written to the Centre to increase the oxygen allocation for Telangana to 600 metric tonnes.
Start diagnosis at home
In a surprising message to the public, the Health Minister, who has until now persistently maintained that only 10 per cent cases require hospitalisation, suggested that patients must undertake specific blood tests every 3-4 days in order to find out if they are susceptible to catch a more serious Covid infection. “We are setting up 19 diagnostic labs in the State. Our main aim is to reduce mortality, and the best way to know if one is vulnerable is by conducting these blood tests,” he said. The commonly prescribed tests for the same are the IL-6 test and the D-dimer test, which show the level of blood clotting and inflamation, which reveal if the patients are reaching a stage where they require oxygen or ventilator support.
TS waiting for vax estimates
Making it clear that the State was not happy with the Centre’s decision on vaccinating those in the 18-45 age range, the Minister remarked, “The Centre has not even announced any modalities of procurement. Was it so difficult for them to plan how many vaccines would be needed by India and what the rate of the supply would be? The onus to control prices is with the Centre,” he said. He noted that unless they had a clear idea on what the manufacturers could supply per day, they were not in a position to come up with a plan. “We have about 1.75 crore individuals in the age group of 18 to 45 years, and to vaccinate them we need three crore vials. We expect to receive about 10 lakh doses each day, but we are waiting to know what supply we can actually get daily,” added Rajender.
