A 45-year-old woman, a resident of Mukundapur off EM Bypass, tested positive for Covid on April 10, along with her husband and other family members.
Her condition has been deteriorating since Thursday evening and she had to be put on oxygen support at home. Family members called up several private hospitals but failed to arrange a bed for the woman, who suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, till late on Friday.
A man in his late 40s, who suffers from chronic kidney disease and undergoes dialysis, tested positive for Covid earlier this week. Relatives took him to the private hospital off EM Bypass where he undergoes dialysis.
“After making us wait for the entire day, the hospital told us that no Covid bed was available,” said a relative of the patient, who is a resident of Kasba.
Many Covid patients across Calcutta are being denied admission at private hospitals and officials of several healthcare units said the number of beds was far inadequate compared with the number of people testing positive daily.
And the number of Covid beds cannot be increased beyond a point because non-Covid patients, too, are queuing up for admission in large numbers.
On Friday, the West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission held a meeting with private hospitals and asked them to augment the Covid bed count by at least 20 per cent compared to what it was during the epidemic’s peak last year.
“We have asked the private hospitals to take their Covid bed strength to a level that is between 20 to 25 per cent more than the number of Covid beds they had reserved last year,” said retired judge Ashim Banerjee, the chairperson of the commission.
“The hospitals will inform us within 24 hours the number of beds they are going to add and by when. Based on today’s discussion, it emerged that there could be an increase of 500 beds,” said Banerjee.
“We have also asked the hospitals to put on hold planned surgeries, which can wait, for two weeks. The hospitals had gradually converted the Covid beds into non-Covid ones after the number of Covid cases started going down last year. A lot of non-Covid patients are admitted and the hospitals have to wait for their discharge (to increase the Covid bed count),” Banerjee said.
The crisis of Covid beds at private hospitals is so severe that at several healthcare facilities, patients are either turned away or have to wait for hours before being admitted.
At AMRI Hospitals in Dhakuria, Salt Lake and Mukundapur, at any point, 10 to 12 Covid patients are waiting in the emergency wards for admission.
Several hospitals said they were in a fix on how to further reduce beds for non-Covid patients and convert them into Covid wards. There are many patients who have undergone surgeries and are recovering. Many patients who had deferred surgeries for months because of Covid are now in hospital waiting for the procedures.
The RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences has 550 beds, out of which 110 are for Covid patients. All were occupied on Friday evening.
"As advised by the health regulatory commission, we will try and increase the bed strength by another 10 per cent over the next few days to take the count up to 121,” said R. Venkatesh, regional director, east, Narayana Health, of which the RN Tagore hospital is the flagship unit.
According to Venkatesh, there are around 100 patients who are recovering after surgeries. And there are another 120-odd patients awaiting admission for surgeries and other procedures in the next three to four days.
AMRI Hospitals Dhakuria has increased the Covid bed count from 80 a week back to 201. “All beds were occupied on Friday evening,” an official of the hospital said.
Peerless Hospital has 43 Covid beds, of which seven are critical care beds. Of the total 360 beds at the hospital, 335 were occupied on Friday. “The pressure of non-Covid patients is very high,” said an official of the hospital.
