The West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission has appealed to people to alert them if a private hospital refuses to admit a Covid patent citing lack of beds.

Healthcare institutes said they were facing a crisis of beds because of the huge number of Covid and non-Covid patients turning up for admission.

Officials of several private hospitals said the situation was likely to worsen because, given the number of non-Covid patients, they could not increase the number of Covid beds beyond a point.

“All are requested to bring to our notice if there is any refusal of admission due to non vacancy in any CE (clinical establishment) so that the matter may be taken to resolve and redirect where admission can take place,” the commission said in an appeal to people on Friday.

An official of the commission said they had received complaints of refusal against a private hospital.

Officials of some private hospitals in the city admitted that the Covid beds, especially the ones in the critical care unit, were mostly occupied.

Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals had no vacant Covid bed on Friday. “We have 38 Covid beds, out of which 18 are ICU beds. All beds are occupied. We are working on adding 18 ICU beds soon,” said an official of the hospital.

At Belle Vue Clinic, all 116 Covid beds were occupied on Friday. “A few Covid patients were refused admission because all our Covid beds are occupied. We will not be able to increase the number of Covid beds again immediately as the demand of non-Covid patients is also very high,” said Pradip Tondon, the chief executive officer of Belle Vue Clinic.

“We have 40 Covid beds and seven of them are ICU beds. Only one ICU bed and five non-ICU beds are vacant,” said Sudipta Mitra, the chief executive of Peerless Hospital.

“We have thought about converting one more ward into a Covid ward. But there are 42 non-Covid patients in that ward now. We have to wait till they are discharged…. It will take some time.”

Most private hospitals have noticed that the demand is more for critical care beds. Rupak Barua, the group chief executive officer of AMRI Hospitals, said all the 55 critical care beds for Covid patients at its units in Mukundapur, Salt Lake and Dhakuria were occupied.

“We have planned to add 20 ICU beds from Monday. All the 55 ICU beds are occupied now. It has remained so for the last two-three days,” he said.

Several complaints of hospitals demanding a hefty deposit before admitting patients had emerged when the pandemic was at its peak last year. The commission had imposed a penalty on a few such hospitals and asked all hospitals to not seek any advance deposit as a condition to admit a Covid patient.

Case count

The number of active Covid cases in Bengal rose by 2,494 to 18,603 on Friday. The state recorded 3,648 new infections and 1,146 recoveries during the day.