GURUGRAM: At a time when Gurugram is adding over 1,000 cases every day and hospital beds are filling up fast, the district administration has ordered that all government and private hospitals ensure that 40% of the total number of beds and 70% of ICU and
ventilator beds are reserved for Covid patients.
While 50% of total beds were reserved for Covid patients earlier, some of these beds will now be used for other patients.
“Those suffering from cancer, kidney and heart diseases and other ailments require hospital admission too and thus the Covid ward beds have been reduced by 10%. Meanwhile, the ICU and ventilator beds, which are needed more for critical Covid patients, we have increased these beds to 70%,” said Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer, Gurugram.
Between March 1 and April 12, the ICU bed occupancy by Covid patients went up by around 467%.
With the recent spurt in cases, pressure on hospital beds has been building up too. The health department and district administration on Tuesday held a meeting with the private and government hospitals representatives.
In the meeting, the hospital administrations were informed that they have to follow the admission and discharge criteria for Covid patients.
Of the total 5,653 beds, including 691 ICU beds and 328 with ventilators, in 44 hospitals, 2,261 have been made available for Covid patients. This includes 491 ICU beds and 233 with ventilators. Currently, 601 (26%) of the
Covid beds are occupied in the city — 185 (37%) of the reserved ICU beds and 48 (21%) of those with ventilators are occupied.
Dr Yadav said patients with fever or upper respiratory tract illness are advised home isolation, oxygen saturation monitoring, to be managed on an OPD basis via video consult and offer to enrol in home isolation programme. These cases are advised to report to the hospital in case of respiratory distress or if SpO2 is less than 94%.
“We have made strict criteria for the hospital admission. People with severe pneumonia, if they have a respiratory rate of less than 30 per minute and SpO2 level of less than 90% in room air, and if they have acute respiratory distress syndrome and septic shock, should be admitted to hospital immediately. Patients requiring up to 8 litres of oxygen support will be admitted in Covid wards. Patients requiring more than 10 litres oxygen support, BIPAP, NIV, HFNC, mechanical ventilation, ARDS, a septic shock to be admitted in ICU. These patients can be discharged when the patient's oxygen requirement is less than 2 litres and afebrile for 3days,” Dr Yadav said.
Nearly 1,000 found positive As many as 998 people were found positive for Covid-19 in the city on Tuesday, taking the tally to 72,271.
The health department said 714 patients also recovered on the day, bringing the total number of recoveries to 65,441.
The recovery rate stands at 91%. One person died of the infection. So far, 370 people in the city have died of Covid, of whom 284 had comorbidities.
As of Tuesday, the city had 6,460 active cases, of which 6,018 were in home isolation. A total of 63 people were sent to an institutional quarantine on Tuesday.
So far, 10,34,761 people have been put under surveillance in the city. In the past 24 hours, the health authorities collected 9,013 samples for antigen and RT-PCR tests.
Till now, 10,31,175 samples have been sent for testing, of which 9,49,891 returned negative while the results of 5,625 are awaited.