COVID-19: Government doing all it can but civil society not responding the way it should, says Dr Shetty of Narayana Health

One of India’s top most cardiac surgeons, Doctor Devi Shetty has said that the way people are out on the streets a day after the Janata Curfew is disappointing.

In an exclusive conversation with CNBC-TV18's Shereen Bhan, the founder of Narayana Health added that while the government was doing whatever it could, the society wasn't responding the way it should. Highlighting the enormity of the crisis India was staring at, doctor Shetty warned that Karnataka alone was likely to have a minimum of 80,000 COVID-19 cases.

“First of all, government is doing whatever they can, but the civil society is not responding the way they should. It is a great disappointment for all of us especially the medical community because in the end they are all going to lean on us to save their life. Yesterday, the total Bandh was very successful. There was nobody on the street, today there is celebration, and you got shopping going on in commercial areas of Bangalore, life is back to normal. Even though government has suspended public transport, closed all the shops, schools, people have lot of time now and they are enjoying and this will put us in a serious trouble," he warned.

"I have done some calculations and Karnataka state alone will have minimum of 80,000 positive patients. At least 15,000-20,000 patients will require hospitalisation and at least 2,500 patients will require ICU care and at least 1,000 patients will need ventilatory support for breathing. Believe me it is a phenomenal number and it will not take one-two months to surface. In Italy, from 300 patients to 10,000 patients it increased in two weeks. All the hospitals will be clogged, there will be patients waiting on the corridor and on the street, there will not be beds, there will not be ventilators. It is not because government hasn’t done the job. They are doing everything possible. But people are not responding. There is no question of social distancing, nobody is staying at home, and everybody is out there celebrating,” said the disappointed doctor.

When asked how prepared we were from a healthcare infrastructure perspective he said, “Karnataka is an exception mainly because the government here has been constantly interacting with the private sector for more than a month and lot of preparations are done and now they are giving away over 1,600-1,700 beds in one or two complexes only for the ICU. They are listening to the advice of the professionals and they are doing everything possible." However, there are natural bottlenecks. We have only one company which can make ventilators and every state is short of ventilators for the number that we are anticipating, he added.

Unfortunately, I have been talking to the companies, till date they haven’t received a firm order from most of the governments and even if they have the firm orders it will take them while to prepare, he said, adding that a lot of the states are way behind what needs to be done, but they can buck up, because the kind of volume we are talking about even if they have all the infrastructure, it will be very difficult to cope.