How much time does it take to find a ventilator bed in and around Hyderabad? To put it simply, one cannot give a definite time period in the current situation.
It took more than five hours for the family members and friends of a 70-year-old woman in Secunderabad whose oxygen saturation level had dropped to 80. They found a bed at a small hospital. But compared to others going through the same ordeal, they were relatively fortunate.
Sai Charan Chikkula, a volunteer who has been helping people find beds in hospitals by responding to calls for help on social media, said it takes 10 to 12 hours to figure out bed availability in all hospitals.
When this reporter heeded an SOS call on Twitter for a ventilator bed for a 51-year-old woman on Sunday evening and reached out to 41 hospitals, as many as 25 said they did not have one available. There was no response to calls by nine hospitals while the numbers of seven hospitals remained busy for long. The numbers had been provided on the government website (health.telangana.gov.in). The patient’s oxygen saturation levels were at a dangerous level of 70.
Even after 90 minutes of relentlessly calling up all hospitals where beds were available — as displayed on health.telangana.gov.in — a ventilator bed could not be tracked. Her family got a breakthrough after over two hours.
Many Twitter users shared a similar experience of finding no beds when they were in the thick of distress, despite calling hospitals where beds were listed as available. Government hospitals and major corporate hospitals in the city limits were fully occupied too.
In case of the 70-year old woman from Secunderabad, the oxygen saturation level dropped from 90 to 80 as her family member took her from one hospital to another in their car.
“Though some hospitals said they have a bed, they refused to admit her after evaluating her condition. The family visited five hospitals. We called up several more. Finally, she got a bed after five hours,” said a family friend of the patient.
Fast occupied
“After 10 to 12 hours of tracking a bed, some hospitals call back 4-5 hours later to inform that a ventilator bed is available. In most cases, it gets occupied in a span of a few minutes, if families do not respond in the nick of time. There could be many reasons for that. The private hospitals might have patients on oxygen beds who might need a ventilator bed while others might have a waiting list to cater to,” Mr Sai Charan said.
He added that it takes him longer to find a bed since he does not go by the bed availability data on the government website, which may not be updated on real time basis. Instead, he calls up each hospital in the city to track the current situation.