DREAD & DESPAIR
Health services across states are on the verge of a breakdown. Patients are struggling to get hospital beds, Covid test reports are delayed by days and there is an acute scarcity of oxygen and vital drugs
Health services across several states are on the verge of a breakdown
The crematorium at Kalkaji, on April 16, had a line of plastic-covered people waiting outside. Only their eyes, burning with grief, were visible. They were members of 12 families who had lost their loved ones to Covid. “It took us two days of calling up friends, family and relatives just to get ventilator support for my mother. I also paid Rs 18,000 for Remdesivir treatment. By the time we got her to an ICU, she was in severe pulmonary distress and died within 18 hours,” says Suhasini Arora, a 21-year-old law student. Delhi, which has experienced three waves of Covid before, has never seen anything like this. On April 19, the city’s positivity rate was 30 per cent, meaning every third person was testing positive. In November, the highest positivity rate was 11.03 per cent, with roughly the same number of daily tests being done. The city has also never seen so many active cases. On April 19, it was 76,887; at the peak of the last wave, it was 42,000. The single-day spikes are recordbreakers as well. The highest number of cases in 24 hours in 2020 was 8,593 on November 11. On April 20, it was over three times higher—28,395. “We are seeing many more young people getting infected. People took the disease too lightly,” says Dr Randeep Guleria, director, AIIMS Delhi. Once cases began to drop, Covid-dedicated hospitals restarted non-Covid services, entrants from states with high case loads, such as Maharashtra and Kerala, were not screened and social events were allowed throughout March. The government also let the city down in terms of preparation. On April 21, Delhi was left with only 2,345 vacant beds, including 27 ICU beds; on April 19, the leading hospitals had an average of 11-16 hours of oxygen supply left. Citizens say it’s taking 2-3 days of endless calling to get a hospital bed. “If there are 2,000 beds left, then why couldn’t I get one? On calling the helpline, I was asked to wait,” says graphic artist Sumeet Kaur, 39, who had to rely on friends to secure her a bed at the LNJP Hospital. In the past two weeks, only 2,000 beds have been added to the public hospitals. If even 20 per cent of those infected require hospitalisation, the city would need 5,600 new beds daily. People are also apprehensive about the scarcity of essential Covid drugs and the delays in testing. It is taking an average of 48 hours to get a slot for an RT-PCR test, and the results can take 2-3 days. Low preparedness has proved to be costly. Delhi has been reporting far more deaths than before. While the total death rate remains the same (1.4 per cent), experts say it is not the correct parameter to judge the proportion of deaths because the denominator (total cases) has been increasing over a year. It was a sad day when Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal admitted that the medical infrastructure couldn’t cope with the demand. The millions who are now under a week-long lockdown can only hope that when they return to the streets, Covid won’t claim them. Not only because they fear the disease, but more so because they can’t trust the logistics of finding treatment in the city.
“Many more YOUNG people are getting infected. People took it TOO LIGHTLY”
Dr Randeep Guleria Director, AIIMS, Delhi