A fresh round of exodus of nurses from private hospitals could slam the brakes on plans to ramp up Covid beds ahead of the festival season.

At least 40 nurses have resigned from Peerless Hospital in the past week.

AMRI has had 40 nurses resigning from its three units (Dhakuria, Mukundapur and Salt Lake) in the past one week.

Belle Vue Clinic has had 20 nurses resigning in the past two days.

Officials of several other private hospitals said nurses in large numbers had submitted their resignations to join state government hospitals.

The state health department had recently started a recruitment drive for nurses. At least 570 nurses have been recruited for government healthcare facilities in the districts, health department officials have said. Many of these recruits are from private hospitals.

Private hospital nurses resigning to work in government hospitals is a regular phenomenon in Bengal. But nurses resigning in large numbers can pose a serious problem because all healthcare units have started expanding Covid beds ahead of Durga Puja, officials of several hospitals said.

The West Bengal Clinical Establishment Commission and the health department have separately asked private hospitals to increase the number of Covid beds because they fear a spike in the number of patients during and after the festival season.

Private hospitals have pledged close to 500 additional beds during a meeting last week, the commission’s chairperson, retired judge Ashim Kumar Banerjee, has said.

“So many nurses leaving on a day’s notice have posed a serious constraint in increasing the number of beds. We have started recruiting nurses… but most of those who have resigned were doing duties in Covid wards and at least one-fourth were in critical care units,” Sudipta Mitra, the chief executive officer of Peerless Hospital, said. “It will take at least a month to train new nurses on donning and doffing PPEs and monitoring Covid patients.”

The requirement for nurses has gone up because of the pandemic.

“Earlier, nurses would work in three shifts. Now, in Covid wards they are working in four shifts for six hours. They are unable to work any longer wearing PPEs,” Ipsita Kundu, CEO, Charnock Hospital, said.

The hospital has seen several nurses resigning in the past two days.

Belle Vue Clinic has recruited 45 nurses from its college. The hospital has increased its Covid bed count to 160 from from 130.

“The new recruits are undergoing rigorous training of 12 hours a day from Monday. We expect them to be ready to take care of Covid patients soon,” Pradip Tondon, the CEO of Belle Vue, said.

AMRI Hospitals has recruited nurses from colleges in Jharkhand, Odisha and Tripura.

“We can’t stop the government from recruiting nurses. We also can’t prevent anyone from leaving. So, we are recruiting from wherever possible to meet the demand,” Rupak Barua, the group CEO of AMRI Hospitals, said.

The hospital has increased 60 beds in its three units.

At the meetings with the regulatory commission and health department last week, some of the private hospitals had said increasing beds would be a problem if nurses resigned.

“The health department had assured us that the recruitment would be held now but nurses would join after the Pujas. But nurses are not reporting for duty after submitting their resignations… there is nothing one can do,” an official of a private hospital said.

Better pay, job security and apparent less workload lure nurses from private hospitals to government ones, officials of several healthcare units said.

Public health experts said there had to be a way out of the problem. “Private and government healthcare systems have to go hand in hand during the pandemic. A solution needs to be evolved,” a public health expert said.

A health department official said recruitments were essential to boost healthcare facilities in the districts.