Delhi govt to scale down Covid beds after ensuring no surge in cases when schools, colleges reopen

Despite a consistent decline in cases from January third week and a positivity rate of less than 5% over the last 10 days, the government shied away from releasing beds for the treatment of other ailments. “All the restrictions are being lifted now and even schools and colleges are reopening, we want to wait and watch whether there is an uptick in cases. We wanted to be cautious. The de-escalation process will likely begin by next week, but even then it will be in a phased manner just like it was scaled up,” said a senior government official.

There were just over 3,000 beds earmarked for the treatment of the infection in government hospitals and temporary facilities such as the ones being run on Ramlila Maidan by the government. Almost all the beds in private sector hospitals were being used for treatment of other ailments with the hospitals hardly seeing any Covid cases after the massive wave of infections in April-May last year.

When the city saw an increase in dengue cases in October and November last year, 20% out of the 30% of beds officially reserved for Covid in the private sector were diverted for its treatment.

The bed strength in the government sector was increased to 4,300 and private hospitals were asked to reserve 40% of their total beds during the first week of January. The number of beds across hospitals was increased to over 12,000 by January second week and to 14,000 by January-end by which time the cases had already started going down.

Even at the peak of the current wave, with cases surging to the same level as the previous wave, bed occupancy remained low. The hospitalisations peaked at 2,734 on January 19 for the current wave, with hospital occupancy remaining at less than 20%.

The Delhi health minister said after the delta variant-driven wave, the government had prepared for over 35,000 hospital and step-down health centres. He said, less than 15,000 beds were released because the hospitalisations weren’t high.

Even though officially all private hospitals are to keep 40% earmarked for Covid, many have already started using them. “Over the two years, we have learned how to quickly convert wards for Covid so if there is a surge we can go back to treating Covid patients. But for now, there are others in need of treatment,” said an official from a private hospital.