Beds fall short, Ghaziabad to send non-critical patients home

Ghaziabad: Amidst mounting pressure to provide beds to critical patients, the Ghaziabad administration and the health department on Monday conducted an audit of patients admitted in hospitals and decided to send home those who are not serious.
At present, Ghaziabad has 3,072 beds across 44 Covid hospitals. Out of them, a total of 2,612 beds are occupied while the remaining 460 beds are isolation beds — that is, they are not equipped with oxygen, ventilator or ICU facilities.
“As a part of our effort to ramp up facilities, we are targeting 460 vacant beds equipped with oxygen,” said Krishna Karunesh, vice-chairperson, Ghaziabad Development Authority. Karunesh was given the additional responsibility of the district magistrate after Ajay Shankar Pandey contracted Covid.
“Santosh Hospital, which is an L3 facility, has 144 vacant beds. Rama Medical College and ESI hospital, both L2 facilities have 160 and 24 vacant beds, respectively. In a few days, we will activate them. They will be equipped with oxygen support,” added Karunesh.
The district also has 697 ICU/ventilator beds, of which 692 were occupied and only five were vacant on Monday.
The administration is planning to carry out surprise raids in all the hospitals to ascertain that no beds are occupied by non-critical patients. “While all private hospitals have been asked to ensure freeing up of beds occupied by non-serious patients, we on our part will carry out inspections to evict such patients,” said Karunesh.
Meanwhile, around 1,700 to 2,000 Covid patients in the district are in home isolation. “Due to the lack of hospital beds, there are nearly 2,000 patients in home isolation. Our team plans to visit them. They will make oxygen cylinders and medicines available to them so that they do not need to visit hospitals and recuperate at home,” said Karunesh.
“There will be a provision to conduct RT-PCR tests of patients and their relatives who are under home isolation. This will ensure early detection of cases so that we can start the medications at their home facility immediately,” added Karunesh.
The administration is also planning to acquire more private hospitals if there is a further surge in cases. “There is already a direction in force, according to which, 10% of beds in all hospitals with over 50 beds need to be reserved for Covid patients,” said Karunesh.
When asked about the scarcity of oxygen in the district, Karunesh said the demand and supply are just even as of now. “Against a daily demand of about 42 tonnes, we are only a little short and the production in other small industries is being ramped up to meet the demand,” said Karunesh.