In a serious contradiction to Chief Minister K Chandrasekahra Rao’s recent statement that the government was battle ready to fight Covid-19 with adequate medical supplies, Health Minister Etela Rajender on Monday made an emergency call to the Union Home Ministry seeking immediate medical supplies to the state.

As the number of corona positive cases in Telangana nears the 1,000 mark, Etela Rajender made a phone call to union health minister Dr Harsha Vardhan on Monday urging the central government to immediately deliver 1,000 ventilators to the state government. Stating that the government had readied a 1,500 bedded covid-19 hospital in Gachibowli, the Telangana health minister urged the center to provide increased number of N95 masks and PPE kits.

Procuring the medical supplies from elsewhere would be a costly proposition for the Telangana government given the economic constraint by the complete lockdown and high expenditure from the steps taken for the containment of the corona virus, Etela told the Union health minister.

In a recent high-level meeting, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao said the government was full prepared to deal with any situation arising out the corona crisis. He said the government was ready to handle even if Covid-19 patients increase to one lakh and that the health ministry had kept 20,000 beds ready. At a high-level meeting with Etela, KCR said, “We have adequate kits to conduct tests. There is no scarcity of PPE kits in the state. We have 2.25 lakh PPE kits and the number will reach 10 lakh PPE kits soon,” he said.