The Bengal government wants private hospitals to allot 10 to 20 per cent of their beds for patients who have either tested positive for Covid-19 or are having symptoms of the disease but most healthcare units have expressed their inability to dedicate so many beds.

Many private hospitals in Calcutta said they would need to upgrade their infrastructure by making arrangements for separate air-conditioning and ventilation systems for the isolation beds and increase staff strength to set aside 10 per cent beds for Covid-19 patients.

On Thursday night, retired judge Ashim Kumar Banerjee, the chairperson of the West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission, the regulatory body for private hospitals, posted a voice message on a closed WhatsApp group appealing to all private hospitals to let him know by Friday morning how many beds they could keep for treating Covid-19 patients.

“I have spoken individually to 15 private hospitals and they have said there is a need to augment the infrastructure. All these hospitals are centrally air-conditioned and would need negative pressure rooms to treat Covid-19 patients. We are making an estimate of how many additional beds in private hospitals we are getting for Covid-19 based on their promises,” Banerjee said on Saturday.

After the appeal, a private hospital with about 250 beds promised to reserve five beds for Covid-19 patients. “We have only four rooms with negative air pressure and it's not possible to have the facility overnight (setting aside 25 beds),” the CEO of the hospital said.

Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals has 22 beds for Covid-19 patients, all of which are occupied, an official of the hospital said. The hospital is planning to add eight more at the most because there are no more rooms available with negative air pressure, the official said.

Peerless Hospital, which has 300 beds, has eight isolation beds and is planning to add 12 more, provided the infrastructure is installed quickly.

“We have started installing extractors, which would suck air from the room and throw it out. Once the construction is complete, we'll have the 12 additional beds,” said Sudipta Mitra, chief executive of the hospital.

The RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences has five isolation beds and it is planning to add another 15. The hospital has 600 beds. “Since addition to the isolation facilities also need special infrastructure and air conditioning system, we have been working on the same,” said R. Venkatesh, regional director, east, Narayana Health, which runs the hospital.

AMRI Hospitals, whose Salt Lake annexe has been requisitioned by the government as a Covid treatment facility, is yet to decide how many beds to dedicate.

“There has been a change in the policy from treating Covid-19 patients in designated hospitals to allowing admissions in non-designated ones. We are willing to allot beds but will have to work out a plan,” said Rupak Barua, group CEO of AMRI.