The Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare recently announced that around 6.4% of the active COVID-19 cases in the country are on critical care support like oxygen, ICU & Ventilators. However, the data from the states does not match this number. Here is a deep dive. The 25 meeting of the high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19 was held on 08 May 2021. After reporting more than 4 Lakh new cases a day at the beginning of May, the daily numbers have since reduced slightly. However, as per the updates from the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MOHFW), India has been consistently reporting more than 3 lakh cases a day, currently the highest in the world. Amidst this, the high-level GoM on COVID-19 assumes prominence. Among the various updates, the Minister of Health & Family Welfare provided information about critical patients being treated and the healthcare infrastructure made available to them. As per the update, around 4.88 lakh critical patients have required ICU beds so far. Further, around 1.7 lakh patients required ventilator support, and around 9.02 lakh patients were extended oxygen support since the beginning of the pandemic in India. This would imply that out of the 2.43 crore COVID-19 cases (as of 15 May 2021), around 6.4% were considered as critical cases requiring ICU beds, ventilator support, or oxygen support. The minister further updated that out of the current active caseload, 1.34% are in ICU, 0.39% are on ventilator support and 3.7% are on oxygen support. Considering that the number of active cases currently is in the range of 36-37 lakh, this would translate to around 50 thousand patients in ICU, around 14 thousand patients on ventilator support, and nearly 1.37 lakh patients on Oxygen support. Apart from this occasional update from the Central government, there are no regular updates on the number of persons requiring such critical care support across the country. There is also no centralized database on the availability of the beds with critical care facilities and the occupancy of the same. On the other hand, there are multiple reports in the media about the lack of adequate beds in hospitals and health support for critical patients infected with COVID-19. All these raise important questions about the accuracy & veracity of the official numbers. For instance, going by the data provided by the Government in February 2021, in the Rajya Sabha about the public health infrastructure, there were 1.57 lakh oxygen-supported beds, 36 thousand ICU beds, and more than 23 thousand ventilator beds just in the public health facilities. If the beds in the private health facilities are added to these numbers, we should have more than enough infrastructure to deal with the current crisis. However, the constant reports of lack of beds raise important questions about the veracity of the official numbers. We looked at the official numbers on bed availability being maintained centrally by a few states to understand this in more detail. Here is what we found. Information availability of COVID-19 beds is not uniform across the states One of the biggest challenges in consolidating state-wise numbers on beds & availability is the lack of uniformity. States of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Delhi, Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, etc. have dedicated dashboards that provide State-level updates on the beds occupied and available. We could not ascertain if the numbers provided by states are accurate. But there have been reports questioning the accuracy of the numbers in these dashboards in certain states. On the other hand, states including Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu ,Karnataka, etc. have dedicated dashboards but these do not provide a state overview, rather the information on beds availability is provided only on a more granular district or hospital level. For most of the remaining states, we could not find a central dashboard or a monitoring system in place. Few of these states have provided the information about the list of COVID-19 hospitals with their capacities and also included helplines but without the updated data on beds & availability. Among States analysed, Telangana, Delhi & M.P have higher share of patients needing critical support Based on the information provided & the availability of dashboards, we have analysed 9 states – the 9 states mentioned above with dedicated dashboards. For Karnataka, the information is available only under BBMP. Furthermore, the information for Maharashtra is partial as only 3 of the 5 dedicated dashboards by region have overall information.