No shortage of Covid-dedicated beds in Delhi: CM

NEWDELHI:Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Monday that there is no dearth of Covid-dedicated beds in the city. He said there are around 15,500 of them, of which 10,000 beds are empty, and that the government is working to add more beds to this number. Kejriwal and deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia paid a visit to Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital (RGSSH) in Tahirpur Monday on a landmark occasion—the release of the 1,000th Covid-19 patient who recovered from the viral infection. The recovery rate in Delhi has improved from 38.5% during June first week to 71.4% on Monday, according to data from the Delhi government.

“Delhi government’s Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital is playing an important role in the fight against Covid-19. Its staff is working day and night. A 1,000 patients have been discharged from here after treatment. It has increased the number of ICU beds from 45 to 200 in a day with limited resources. We have asked the hospital authorities to increase it to 500 in the next few days,” he said.

“There are around 15,500 beds in the city, of which 10,000 are empty. Delhi also has around 1,900 ICU beds, of which 750 are vacant. But in the next few days, the bed requirement will increase due to an expected spike in the number of Covid-19 cases.”

Over the last three months, older people with severe symptoms of Covid-19 are being admitted to RGSSH. “With mildly symptomatic patients recovering at home, we now get only patients with moderately severe to severe symptoms—several of them require oxygen and ventilator support,” Dr BL Sherwal, the medical director of RGSSH. which was the second hospital in the city to be converted into a dedicated Covid-19 centre in April, said. The doctors treating the patients said that the average age of the patients has increased from around 35 years to over 50 years.

“The younger people must have passed it on to the elderly living in their homes because now the average age is over 50 years,” Dr Ajeet Jain, the nodal officer for Covid-19 at the hospital, said.