The Association of Healthcare Providers of India (AHPI) has raised objections to the Delhi government order directing private hospitals to reserve 80 per cent of critical care beds for Covid-19 patients.

“The order has been issued without discussions with the private hospitals and no effort was made by the government of National Capital Territory (NCT) to understand the current demand-supply situation of critical care beds in the private hospitals in the State/City,” said Girdhar Gyani, Director General, AHPI.

Currently, Non-Covid patients constitute 45-55 per cent of all the admissions in the private hospitals in Delhi. Hence, reserving ICU beds for Covid-19 patients means either the hospitals do not admit the non-Covid patients or accept-sub-optimal outcomes, he added.

“Covid-19 patients cannot be co-located in same ICU as the Non-Covid patients. This virtually means that the ICU beds need to be segregated and if there is one Covid-19 patient in an ICU, no Covid-19 patient can be admitted,” said Gyani.

The order needs modification and given that the ICU bed capacity is 25-30 per cent of the total beds in the hospital, the same ratio (as for non-ICU beds) is recommended to ensure that critical care services are not denied to non-Covid patients, he added.

According to the latest data , there were 14,409 beds in hospitals out of which 6,592 were occupied and 7,817 were vacant.

Total positive cases on Monday stood at 3,229 while the total 44,884 tests were conducted.