Soon, get real-time data on Gurugram’s hospital beds

GURUGRAM: After receiving several complaints of unavailability of beds at private hospitals for Covid-19 cases, the GMDA will provide real-time data to keep the patients and their families updated.
The data, which will be posted on GMDA’s OneMap portal, will have list of hospitals, names and contact details of doctor and nodal officer and the numbers of beds available for Covid patients.
“An online portal for hospitals has been created where details about beds and occupancy will be made available on real-time basis,” said Sonal Goel, who is supervising the management of beds and ventilators. She is also the CEO of GMCBL.
Vivek Kalia, estate officer 2 of HSVP (Gurugram), said the portal will go live soon.
“The hospitals will be inspected and their services regularly monitored. Separate counters at each hospital have been designated to attend to Covid patients,” he added.
Officials said 925 beds have been reserved for Covid patients at 23 designated hospitals in the city. As of Saturday, 670 of these were available. “We are augmenting the capacity. A total of 3,399 hospital beds are available in the district,” said an official.
Many people have alleged they faced problems in getting admission at private hospitals. Last month, a pregnant Covid patient was referred by a city hospital to Faridabad, where her two-day-old child, who also tested positive, died.
The district administration had issued notices to three hospitals — Park, Paras and W Pratiksha — after they refused treatment to Covid patients citing lack of beds. GMDA CEO VS Kundu warned private hospitals of legal action if they refused treatment to any pregnant Covid-19 patient. “Criminal action will be taken against the hospital,” he said.
On June 2, Dr Joyeeta, co-founder of Doctors Hub, had posted on Twitter: “There are not enough beds, try getting someone admitted.” She said while there had been a sharp rise in cases in Gurugram, no beds were available for Covid patients at several leading hospitals, and some of them were denying admission.
A senior official said the administration has issued protocols for home isolation for asymptomatic patients. “All Covid patients do not need hospitalisation,” he said.
Officials said Gurugram has also strengthened its ambulance service 108 and has increased the number of operators from one to 12.
Haryana chief secretary Keshnai Anand Arora held a meeting with the district magistrates of Gurugram, Faridabad, Panipat, Jhajjar and Sonipat, the five districts that have reported the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the state, to create dashboards to give real-time information about availability of beds, ambulances and testing capacity.
“They were told to increase their capacities in terms of hospital beds, infrastructure and human resources,” said Yashapal Yadav, deputy commissioner, Faridabad.
(With inputs from Vishakha Chaman)