A 40-year-old serious COVID-19 patient who was on mechanical ventilator support at MGM Hospital, Warangal died on Saturday before being shifted to another ventilator after a power cut. Officials at the government hospital said that although they had a generator, a technical slag developed from it, and the patient died within a few minutes before they could provide him with another mechanical ventilator.
The patient, identified as Gandhi, was admitted to the hospital on 25 February. Superintendent of the hospital. Nagarjuna Reddy said that Mr. Gandhi was provided with ventilator support from 6 March. “Despite being on a ventilator and providing 100% oxygen. His saturation level was 80-85. He was in critical condition and could not tolerate a lack of ventilator support even for a minute,” said Dr. Nagarjuna.
There was a power cut between 11 am and 12 am on Saturday. And the generator developed a technical problem that took about 15 minutes to 20 minutes to fix. The hospital superintendent said that every mechanical ventilator has a power backup, so that it works despite a power cut. The ventilator was provided to Mr. Gandhi, who had a power.
“We anticipated some delay in repairing the generator, and wondered if the back-up power in the ventilator would be sufficient. So we planned to shift it to the ventilator with better back up. Dr. Nagarjuna said that the time was not even five minutes. The superintendent said that it took only two to three minutes to shift the patient to another ventilator and the patient died during this time.
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