In Vadodara’s Gotri locality, the Covid-19 hospital operated by the Gujarat Medical Education Research Society (GMERS) experienced a loss of power supply for over 12 hours on Tuesday, The Indian Express reported. The situation resulted in panic, rattling the kin of the patients on life support.
When the power outage occurred, around 12 coronavirus patients were on oxygen support, while six were on ventilator support. The outage happened because of a transformer glitch and the issue was resolved at 7pm, the report said.
The loss of supply resulted in air-conditioning units of the Covid-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) shutting down. Sources told IE that because on the power outage, just two of the total seven air conditioners were operational in the hospital’s ICU.
There was a glitch in the hospital’s internal transformer, resulting in the day-long power cut, the Madhya Gujarat Vij Company Ltd (MGVCL) officers were quoted as saying.
CEO of Vadodara Urban Development Authority (VUDA), Ashok Patel, who took charge as the administrative officer of the Covid-19 hospital, said that concerned officers were working to fix the issue.
Gujarat is one of the states worst-hit by the coronavirus outbreak. The state has reported 361 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours and 27 deaths, including 23 in the worst-hit Ahmedabad, taking the total case count to 14,829 and fatalities to 915, a Health official said on Tuesday.
A total of 503 persons were discharged from hospitals from Ahmedabad, Surat and Vadodara, taking the overall tally of the recovered cases to 7,137.