Hyderabad,  Gandhi Hospital, Telangana's largest government-run hospital and a total Covid facility, has no ventilator bed left, state Health Minister E. Rajender said on Thursday.

All 619 ventilator beds in the hospital are occupied, shows the Covid-19 hospital bed availability status.

Rajender attributed this situation to several private hospitals sending critically ill patients to Gandhi either due to lack of ventilators or oxygen or because the families of the patients are unable to pay their charges. He told reporters that this is also leading to an increase in number of deaths.

The minister has asked government-run hospitals in other parts of the state to ensure treatment of Covid patients in their respective districts and not to send them to Hyderabad.

Gandhi Hospital has a total of 1,869 beds of which 1,050 are vacant.

The Health Minister said while ventilator beds in government-run hospitals in Hyderabad were occupied by local patients, the same in private hospitals were occupied by patients from other states like Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh.

A total of 116 government hospitals in the state have 1,801 ICU beds (ventilator/CPAP) of which 764 are vacant.

The state has 925 private hospitals treating Covid. They have 6,603 ICU beds of which 2,856 are vacant.

Rajender said the state effectively tackled the first wave of Covid-19 last year and was making all efforts to contain the spread during the second wave.

He said as testing is key to check the spread, the state is conducting 1.10 lakh to 1.50 lakh tests every day. "If necessary, the department is ready to conduct 2 lakh tests every day," he said.

He dismissed the criticism for conducting less number of RT-PCR tests and pointed out that the result of these tests take 2-4 days.

Rajender said the state has maximum capacity of doing 30,000 RT PCR tests every day.

The minister said urban areas and districts bordering Maharashtra were recording more number of cases. He pointed out that districts like Nirmal, Adilabad, Nizamabad and Jagtiyal were witnessing a spike.