With everday spike of over 20,000 Covid-19 new cases for last ten days Delhi has run out of its intensive care unit (ICU) beds for Covid patients.
There are total 20,461 beds dedicated to treat Covid-19 patients in the national capital and out of those about 4,705 are ICU beds.
On Monday night the government’s Delhi Corona app showed that only 12 ICU beds were left in the city. 11 of them were in Madhukar Rainbow hospital in Malvia Nagar that are only reserved for pregnant Covid-19 patients.
The remaining one ICU bed was in Trauma Centre at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), which was converted into a Covid-19 hospital last year. However, the hospital staff said that the bed was not available and there were many serious patients who are on ventilators waiting to get admitted in emergency.
The phone numbers provided for those hospitals in the app were also not available as the number provided for Trauma Centre remained busy at all times and the two numbers for Madhukar Rainbow hospital remained switched off.
Despite CM Arvind Kejriwal’s request that no call goes unanswered the only two hospitals that showed availabilty of beds remained unreachable whole night.
“The situation is terrible. We receive so many patients who are brought dead to the emergency department of the hospital. This is because they go from hospital to hospital in search of beds. Every hospital is full,” said a doctor at a private hospital.
The situation in Delhi is so worsening that two out of three big hospitals in the city has reduced their number of beds due to shortage of oxygen needed to treat Covid-19 patients.
“When a hospital is planned, it is thought that 20% to 30% beds will need oxygen supply. But, since we take in only the very sick Covid-19 patients, 100% of our beds require oxygen now. And, 50% to 60% of the beds need high-flow oxygen. This is putting too much pressure on our plant. So, we decided to reduce beds,” said an official from Guru Teg Bahadur hospital, which is the biggest hospital in trans-Yamuna region.
The hospital had reduced its beds from 900 to 700 on saturday.
Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain, last week had noticed that the city was running out of its ICU beds.
“Yes, there is a shortage of ICU beds. We have requested the Centre to increase the number of beds in their hospitals to 7,000. Currently, there are 2,000 beds in Central government hospitals. The Centre will increase 700 to 800 ICU beds soon,” Mr Jain had said.
