Kathmandu, June 22 The Ministry of Health and Population has made arrangements for medical treatment by making a projection of probable COVID-19 patients. The Ministry has readied 1,000 ventilators and 1,800 ICUs throughout the country by projecting the number of serious coronavirus patients. Policy and planning chief at the ministry, Dr Guna Raj Lohani said the ventilators and ICUs have been managed targeting 2,000 estimated serious COV- ID-19 cases. “If the infection increases now, the number of infected people will reach 40,000 by August 18. If half of them became serious, the number of serious coronavirus patients will reach 2,000 and if two per cent became seriously ill the number of serious patients will be 800. We have made the estimation in this way,” he said, adding that the ventilators and the number of ICU beds have been managed on the basis of this calculation. The ministry had directed the bodies concerned to install five ICUs and two ventilators at two hospitals per province. The ministry had installed 890 ventilators and 1,600 ICU beds before this and it increased the number of ventilators and beds after the number of coronavirus cases increased. The ministry has estimated the current number of ventilators and ICU beds would be sufficient as most of the infected people will not become serious. Director at the Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases Division Dr Basudev Pandey said 98 per cent of people suffering from COVID-19 do not have the symptoms related to the disease. He said ventilators and ICUs would not be required for those people without infection after PCR tests. According to him, at present, three people have been kept in isolation in Kathmandu, six people are being treated in isolation in Butwal and one person at Patan Academy of Health Sciences. A version of this article appears in e-paper on June 23, 2020, of The Himalayan Times.