The state government on Friday asked private hospitals to plan an increase in Covid beds as the number of people suffering from the disease is rising again, officials said.

The hospitals were told to monitor the situation and increase the number of beds whenever they feel occupancy was nearing the optimum level.

Senior officials of the state health department told hospitals at an online meeting on Friday that a situation must not arise where Covid patients needing hospitalisation was not getting a bed.

“Many private hospitals reduced the number of Covid beds after the number of cases started falling rapidly late last year. We asked them to once again review the situation and increase the number of beds. There are about 1,000 beds in private hospitals in Calcutta and half of them are vacant, but we need to be careful as the infections are increasing,” said Narayan Swaroop Nigam, the secretary of the health department.

Officials of several private hospitals in the city said they would not have any problem in increasing the bed count.

“Currently we have 40 Covid beds, 24 in the ward and 16 in the critical care unit, at the RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences. As of today we have 12 Covid patients and all are in the ward. We will constantly monitor the numbers. If the numbers increase sharply, we will add more Covid beds so as to ensure that all patients coming to the hospital are accommodated,” said R. Venkatesh, the regional head of Narayana Health, of which the RN Tagore hospital is a part.

Sudipta Mitra, the chief executive officer of Peerless Hospital, said 23 of the hospital’s 40 Covid beds were occupied on Friday. “We can increase the count by about 150 in a short time. The number of beds was reduced but we have not removed any infrastructure,” Mitra said.

Belle Vue Clinic had 32 of its 34 Covid beds occupied on Friday. The hospital will add 13 beds each in two phases. “We will keep increasing the number of beds if the number of patients increases,” said Pradip Tondon, the CEO of the hospital.

The AMRI Hospitals group has decided to add 10 critical beds at their Dhakuria unit next week. “We have 55 Covid beds at our Salt Lake and Dhakuria units together. We will set up 10 more critical beds at the Dhakuria unit next week,” said Rupak Barua, the group CEO of AMRI Hospitals.

The Salt Lake unit had withdrawn all Covid beds but reintroduced 10 last week.

Woodlands Hospital has 45 Covid beds and will add another 35 soon.

The private hospitals were also told to regularly update their Covid bed count and the number of vacant beds on the health department’s website, wbhealth.gov.in.

The department also held a meeting with senior officials of government hospitals from Calcutta, Howrah, and North and South 24-Parganas on Friday and asked them to stay prepared. “These are the four districts where the numbers are rising mostly,” said Nigam.