Facilities to battle Covid-19 crisis in Ranchi have started to crumble with several bodies of Covid victims awaiting cremation for over 24 hours and a shortage of life-saving drugs haunting patients and their relatives even if they manage to find berths in hospitals amid the acute shortage of beds.

In the past 48 hours, Ranchi’s Covid positivity rate has been higher than 18 per cent, which is almost as bad as Mumbai and Delhi. On Saturday, as many as 5,442 swab samples were tested in Ranchi and 904 of them, around 16.6 per cent, were found positive. On Sunday, the positivity rate further increased to over 20 per cent in the district as 1,076 of the 5,174 samples tested were found to be Covid positive.

As per figures with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the positivity rate in Delhi during the past 48 hours has been around 10 per cent, while the positivity rate in Mumbai was around 20 per cent during the same period. The positivity rate in Ranchi was higher than that in Delhi and a shade lower than what Mumbai reported.

Even though the population and Covid tally in Ranchi is much lower than that in Mumbai and Delhi, two of the worst-affected cities in India, the high positivity rate here has brought to light the lack of readiness to tackle a possible Covid explosion in the near future, say experts.

Many Covid patients, including some with comorbid conditions, had to struggle to get a bed in a hospital during the past two days. As per government data, there are 2,383 dedicated Covid beds in Ranchi for 6,701 patients, as reported on Sunday night.

Nripendra Kumar, himself a Covid patient, could not find a bed in a private hospital for his Covid-positive father despite contacting all the renowned healthcare facilities in the city on Sunday.

“There are no beds available in hospitals. Doctors have prescribed some life-saving injections, but those are also not available anywhere in Ranchi,” Kumar, five of whose family members are battling the viral infection, said referring to the unavailability of remdesivir, an anti-viral injection administered to Covid patients with serious symptoms.

Jharkhand received 1,500 doses of Remdesivir injections from the Centre on Monday, thanks to the efforts of state health minister Banna Gupta. “All the freshly received doses have been dispatched directly to about 15 hospitals that were in need of Remdesivir injections,” Gupta said after his office issued a special communiqué.

In fact, Gupta had recently spoken to Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Harsh Vardhan over video conferencing and sought more remdesivir injections citing the acute crisis in Jharkhand.

The second wave of Covid-19 has not only hit testing labs and hospitals in the city, but also affected cremation of Covid victims. The electric incinerator at Mukti Dham in Harmu, used only for cremation of Covid-infected bodies, broke down aparently due to over-use on Sunday. Around a dozen Covid-positive bodies were in ambulances outside the crematorium for the entire day and were eventually moved to some other location.

Dr Ajay Kumar Singh, the state coordinator of Indian Medical Association (IMA), warned that the virus was spreading more rapidly during the second wave in Jharkhand cities, and a lack of caution may prove to be disastrous.