With 624 Covid beds vacant, govt hospitals breathe easy

Nagpur: The decision to allow various facilities to admit Covid-19 positive patients, like Covid Care Centres (CCC), private hospitals and even home isolation, has reduced the burden on the three government Dedicated Covid Hospitals (DCHs) to a great extent. These three hospitals are now giving proper treatment to moderate and critical symptomatic patients, and still have enough beds to take in more serious patients as number of active patients increased to 2,420.
As on Tuesday, the three government DCHs — Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Indira Gandhi Government Medical College and Hospital (IGGMCH) and AIIMS — had 636 (26.28%) positive patients. GMCH has 331 patients followed by 259 in IGGMCH. The capacity in Covid Isolation wards of these two hospitals is 1,200. AIIMS had 46 patients in its 60 beds.
Since the city registered its first case on March 11, GMCH and IGGMCH were treating all types of positive patients — asymptomatic, moderate and critical symptomatic. AIIMS started services in middle of May. These three DCHs took care of all patients for 112 days till July 6.
With 2,420 active patients as on Tuesday, these three DCHs could have accommodated only 1,260, if other facilities had not been started.
Officials from GMCH told TOI, “It is a very big relief for government DCHs as we stopped getting asymptomatic patients. Now, we are concentrating on critical symptomatic and comorbid patients. But, with rise in number of cases, patients with symptoms and comorbidities also increased. Staff crunch is still a big issue.”
After a hue and cry from GMCH and IGGMCH for treating only moderate and critical symptomatic patients, divisional commissioner Sanjeev Kumar and municipal commissioner Tukaram Mundhe had started CCC at MLA Hostel on July 6, which is taking care of most of the asymptomatic positive patients. As on Tuesday, 235 asymptomatic positive patients were admitted at this facility.
In a hush-hush manner, NMC had also started more CCCs at Vanamati, Pachpaoli and VNIT. The latter, VNIT, has 22 patients while there are 2 at Pachpaoli and none at Vanamati as on Tuesday.
Later, the defence department started CCC for its staff and family members at Kamptee cantonment, jail administration began one at Central Jail for its inmates, and zilla parishad too began one each in all 13 tehsils. Some 300 asymptomatic patients are undergoing treatment in these for a total of 563 (23.26%) patients in all CCCs.
Collector Ravindra Thakare had identified two trust-run hospitals with capacity of 1,200 beds but only one — Shalinitai Meghe Institute — has started accepting Covid patients, and had only 2 patients on Tuesday. Lata Mangeshkar Hospital at Hingna is yet to be started.
Kumar had also given permission for one private hospital. Then, Mundhe on July 24 had issued orders directing 10 private hospitals to start Covid-19 services, of which only two started. Two more private hospitals started services on its their wish. Around 200 (8.26%) patients were admitted in these five private hospitals as on Tuesday.
Though NMC and ZP do not have exact figure of home isolation on Tuesday, over 600 (24.79%) patients are said to be under home isolation in the district and remaining 419 under process of admission in various facilities.