Govt to reserve 15% of ICU beds in seven private hospitals in Gzb

Ghaziabad: Around 15% of ICU beds will be reserved in seven private Covid hospitals in the city, where patients will be offered subsidised rates for treatment, health officials said on Wednesday.
The seven hospitals together have 444 Covid beds, out of which 84 are ICU beds. Of those, 13 will be kept by the health department.
While Le Crest hospital in Vasundhara and Flores hospital in Pratap Vihar are each running 100-bed Covid facilities, they have 13 and eight ICU beds, respectively. Two branches of Yashoda Hospitals, in Nehru Nagar and Kaushambi, have 55 (12 ICU) and 30 beds (nine ICU), respectively. Three private hospitals in Vaishali, Max Hospital, Navin Hospital and Chandra Laxmi Hospital, have 49 (23 ICU), 60 (12 ICU) and 50 (seven ICU) beds, respectively.
While the subsidised charges are expected to be Rs 4,500 per day, officials said it is not yet clear who will foot the bill — the government or the patient. They added that only patients referred by the health department would have access to the reserved ICU beds.
Giving the break-up of the reserved ICU beds, chief medical officer N K Gupta said, “In Max Hospital, we have reserved three ICU beds and two each at both the Yashoda hospitals, Navin Hospital and Le Crest. One bed each has been given to us by Flores and Chandra Laxmi.”
Besides the ICU beds being reserved in the seven private hospitals, there are 30 others in the government set-up — 10 at District Combined Hospital (L2) and 20 at Santosh Hospital (L3).
Meanwhile, two government L1 hospitals, with a combined capacity of 700 beds, will be made functional from Thursday. While IMS College will have 400 beds, RKGIT College will add another 300.
On Friday, the Meerut divisional commissioner had directed the health department to increase the number of ventilator beds by about 40.
So far, Ghaziabad has reported 2,612 Covid-19 cases, out of which 1,477 are active. Currently, ESI Hospital (76 beds), Divyajyoti Ayurvedic Hospital (250 beds), SRM University (400 beds), District Combined Hospital (100 beds) and Santosh Hospital (400 beds) are functional government facilities.