Coronavirus in Delhi: With record over 7,000 cases surge on Friday, city’s private, govt hospitals face ICU bed crunch

With Delhi becoming the biggest contributor to the country’s Covid-19 tally with over 7,000 cases getting reported on Friday in the city, the capital’s hospitals have started facing the ICU beds crunch, the Indian Express reported. So far, the lack of ICU beds in view of the rising number of Covid-19 patients needing ICU support, was being faced in the city’s private hospitals only but now the government run hospitals have also started reporting the ICU bed crunch.

A total of 7,178 new Coronavirus cases were registered in the national capital on Friday with another 64 Covid-19 related casualties. The consistent rise in the number of Covid-19 cases infection could be gauged from the fact that a total of 42,187 new cases were reported in the city in the last seven days only. With Friday’s surge the total number of Coronavirus cases in the city has reached the total of 4,23,831. A total of 6833 people have also succumbed to the deadly disease till now.

So far, as the number of ICU beds in the private sector hospitals in the city are concerned, out of the capacity of 1250 ICU ventilator beds, 912 have already been occupied with a little more than 25 percent of the beds remaining vacant at this point. The crunch is further compounded by the fact that in some areas of the city not a single ICU ventilator is vacant at the moment including the area of Sardar Patel hospitals, Safdarjung and Deen Dayal Upadhaya, according to the data collated by the Indian Express from the Delhi government’s Corona app.

The situation at the hospitals run by the central government is equally worrisome with only two beds being vacant at the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital out of its capacity of 28. The AIIMS trauma centre which has a total capacity of 50 beds also has only five ICU beds vacant at the moment.

Dr N N Mathur, who is the Medical Director at the Lady Hardinge Medical College told the Indian Express that due to the sudden spike in the number of Coronavirus cases in the last 48 hours, the situation has become quite grim. Mathur also said that currently the hospitals are running at their full capacity but also have submitted an action plan to the centre to arrange 25-30 more ICU ventilator beds for the patients.

The biggest Covid-19 dedicated hospital in the city Lok Nayak hospital which comes under the UT government is also facing the crunch of ICU beds with only 19 beds available from its capacity of 200. Dr Suresh Kumar, who is the Medical Director at the Lok Nayak hospital told the Indian Express that since the last seven days the hospital has been admitting about 80-90 patients everyday and half of them are in need of ICU support. Kumar, however, added that if the circumstances demand the addition of more ICU beds, the hospitals will increase the bed strength.