The non-Covid critical care units at most private hospitals are filling up fast at a time when the demand for Covid beds is going down, said officials.
Doctors and officials of several private hospitals said apart from people suffering from cardiac problems, strokes and other conditions, many patients suffering from post-Covid complications are coming back to hospital and some of them are in need of critical care beds.
Also, some people suffering from Covid need critical care even after testing negative for the disease and they are being shifted from the Covid ICU to the non-Covid ICU.
Most hospitals have not resumed elective surgeries but emergency procedures like angioplasty (performed to remove blocks in coronary arteries), or orthopedic and neurosurgery are taking place along with cancer surgeries.
For the last couple of months, when Covid cases were surging across the country, there were only a few non-Covid patients as many were scared to get admitted to hospital. But now, they have started coming back, and many need critical care because of the delay, said doctors.
Some hospitals are planning to switch some Covid critical care beds to non-Covid beds but others said they would not be able to do so because the CCUs in both sections were full.
Peerless Hospital has 41 critical care beds for Covid patients. On Thursday night, 38 were occupied. All 14 non-Covid critical care beds at the hospital were occupied.
“We have to either refuse critical non-Covid patients or admit and treat them in the high dependency units, which are one level lower than the ICU. Even 10 days back, the non-Covid critical care unit would have four to five empty beds,” said Sudipta Mitra, the chief executive of Peerless Hospital.
At AMRI Hospitals, Dhakuria, there are 55 Covid and 21 non-Covid critical care beds. On Thursday evening, all were occupied.
“The demand for non-Covid critical care beds has been rising over the past week. But we are unable to switch Covid CCU beds to non-Covid CCU beds because those are still occupied. This time, most Covid patients in need of critical care are having to stay in the ICU for a longer duration than during the first wave,” said an official of the hospital.
According to the hospital, many Covid beds in the general ward were empty.
A doctor said this time more people were coming back to the hospital with post-Covid complications compared to last year.
“The number of Covid patients this time is much more than last year and so are the number of people coming back with post-Covid complications. Some of those people need critical care beds,” said Chandramouli Bhattacharya, a consultant in tropical medicine and infectious diseases at Peerless Hospital.
“Also, because of a prolonged ICU stay, some Covid patients are testing negative and so have to be shifted to the non-Covid ICU. This way, their relatives can meet them,” said Bhattacharya.
The hospitals where a few Covid ICU beds are vac-ant are planning to convert some of the beds to non-Covid ones.
The RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences has 130 Covid ICU beds, out of which only 80 were occupied on Thursday evening. The hospital has 120 non-Covid ICUs, all of which were occupied, said an official.
“We are planning to turn two Covid ICU wards with 30 beds and one general ward with 20 beds to non-Covid units from next week. It's becoming impossible to cope with the rising number of critical non-Covid patients,” said R. Venkatesh, regional director, east, Narayana Health, of which the RN Tagore hospital is the flagship unit.
“The condition was not so for the last couple of months when we had only a few critical patients in the non-Covid units,” he said.
