Real time data on beds soon, says govt after complaints
Delhi govt says availability is adequate after patients said they could not get beds
NEWDELHI/MUMBAI: Are Delhi and Mumbai running out of hospital beds for Covid-19 patients? The data shows they are not: Delhi has 4,606 beds available for Covid patients according to the Delhi government, and Mumbai, 3,289, according to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. And health care policy makers and administrators insist there is no lack of beds, or ICU bed/beds with ventilators (184 in Delhi and 64 in Mumbai).
Yet, over the past few days, several people who have been unable to find beds or get treated in Delhi and Mumbai have taken to social media to express their frustration -- this, when government data shows there is no shortage.
According to Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain, there is no shortage: “The truth is that there is absolutely no shortage of beds in Delhi at the moment. In the last three days, more than 1000 patients have been admitted to various hospitals in Delhi. If beds were not available, this would have not been possible. Even now we have close to 5000 vacant beds.”
Jain added that the issue lies with the hospitals not updating data on the Delhi Corona mobile application, where the official figures are made available. “So clearly the issue is that some hospitals are not updating the data on Delhi Corona app on time or misrepresenting actual data when patients call. Patients were not getting data on hospitals before, which the Delhi corona app is trying to fix. We are making hospital bed data live and real time soon.”
Still, on May 26, 47-year-old Jagdish Ujjainwala who was admitted to the hospital on May 21, died of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) because his family was told that there was no free ICU bed available to treat his fastworsening condition. And on May 27, the government-run Lok
Nayak Hospital, one of the Covid-19 designated hospitals in Delhi had 1386 vacant isolation beds and 64 vacant ventilator supported beds, according to the data made available by the state government in its mobile application, Delhi Corona.
When asked about the number of available beds, the hospital’s acting medical director Dr PN Pandey said: “We have adequate ICU, ventilator, oxygen-supported beds available in the hospital. And, we do not refuse treatment to any patient in need of hospital care.” He added that he did not wish to comment on any particular person’s case.
Ujjainwala’s case is not an exception. In Delhi and Mumbai, the incidence of people being turned away from hospitals or kept waiting for hours on end, on account of non-availability of beds, is on the rise.
In Mumbai, the vacancies in the city’s 125 designated Covid-19 health centres and hospitals are
even fewer. Of the total 1,097 ICU beds, 98% are occupied, according to data released by the municipal body on June 3; of the 442 ventilators, 85.5% are currently being used by the critically ill. On May 26, a 51-year-old physician from Cheetah Camp in Trombay, Mumbai, died of Covid-19 related complications after being taken to two hospitals, and finally admitted in a third, where he was forced to share a bed with another suspected Covid-19 patient for two days due to non-availability of beds. His teenage son, who accompanied him, said that patients were lying on the floor between beds in the casualty ward of the government-run Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital. He died within a day of being shifted into the Covid ward.
In theory, everything is fine in Mumbai too. “If anyone calls at the helpline number— 1916, it gets connected with a doctor who asked for symptoms of the suspected patient. Depending on the condition of the person, they will be allotted with centres or hospitals for treatment,” said Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner.Delhi has reported 1278 cases every day at an average in the last seven days; in the seven days before that the city reported 723 new cases at an average; Mumbai, meanwhile, has been consistently averaging over 1300 new cases a day in the past two weeks. This indicates that the strain on resources will certainly not abate in the coming weeks. On Friday night, Mumbai had 25768 active cases (46080 total cases) and Delhi 15,311 active cases (26,334 total cases). It is in this scenario that the Delhi government has tried to make resources available for those who are in actual need of them: on Friday, it directed five Covid-dedicated government hospitals to increase their bed capacity by 13,670, including 750 ventilators, in three weekly phases to be completed by June 25; earlier this week, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia announced that three more private hospitals would be converted into Covid-19 treatment facilities, and warned that hospitals with mixed use beds (20% reserved for Covid-19 positive patients) will be converted into dedicated facilities if they are found to be non-compliant. It also issued fresh orders to hospitals on Thursday to discharge mild or asymptomatic Covid-19 patients and said that designated facilities should turn away such patients.
“In case the hospital refuses a bed to any patient in spite of beds being shown available, the government can and will take action. Some hospitals are refusing to take patients and the government will take strict action against them soon,” a media advisor to chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said. Hospitalisation isn’t the only thing people are complaining about.
There would appear to be a similar problem with testing.