Patients line up outside Lok Nayak Hospital amid relentless case surge

As the Covid-19 cases zoomed past the 25,000 mark in Delhi on Sunday, social media was abuzz with requests for help in arranging beds, plasma donors, medicines and oxygen supply.

On the road where only one-way traffic is permitted, an ambulance zooms past the flow of traffic to make it to the main gate of the Lok Nayak Hospital. The security guard signals the ambulance to stop, but lets it in moments later.

Family members on their phones as they react to the death of a relative outside Lok Nayak hospital on Sunday afternoon. (PTI)

It was a matter of life and death for the Covid-19 positive patient inside -- the reason why the guard did not insist that the ambulance come in by another gate marked for Covid-19 patients. “The driver said the patient’s oxygen level was critically low,” the guard explained.

On Sunday afternoon, there was no long queue of ambulances outside the hospital -- unlike Saturday night -- but each coronavirus patient and their family arriving at the hospital had a story to tell.

As the Covid-19 cases zoomed past the 25,000 mark in Delhi on Sunday, social media was abuzz with requests for help in arranging beds, plasma donors, medicines and oxygen supply.

On Saturday night, a video shared on Twitter by a journalist, showed that a patient in one of the several ambulances queued up outside the hospital, died even before entry into the hospital. Another photo shared on Twitter showed a patient sitting outside the hospital with an oxygen mask and cylinder.

Lok Nayak is the Delhi government’s biggest dedicated Covid facility, with 1,620 beds. As of 5.30pm on Sunday, the Delhi Corona app showed, only 184 of these beds were vacant. Meanwhile, not one of the 350 ICU beds was available.

One patient, whose family identified him just as Prasad, a resident of south Delhi’s Kalkaji, made frantic phone calls despite lying in an ambulance with an oxygen mask around his face. “He knows people who could arrange plasma and other things. We don’t know who to approach,” said a woman accompanying him.

Another young man, Saajan Prakash, stood outside the hospital and opened a fresh Twitter account. “I am just being ready in case we need to seek any help,” said Prakash whose uncle is hospitalised.

There was another patient who arrived with five relatives -- that included four women -- accompanying him in an ambulance.

“Only he is infected, but we have arrived to offer support,” said one of those relatives.

A few patients arrived in private cars and one even in an auto-rickshaw. The relative of one such patient was wearing a PPE suit and put up a plastic partition in the car to keep him separate. “I am his uncle. One of us needs to be safe,” said the man behind the wheel, about the protection.

Suresh Kumar, director of Lok Nayak Hospital, advised relatives of patients to check the government’s app for available beds before rushing to a hospital. “Our hospital does not have any empty ICU beds now. I advise that patients be taken to other hospitals to save time,” he said.

Ambulance drivers outside the hospital said in the last few days there is a queue every evening. “We don’t know why the rush occurs in the evening and night, but the queue extended for several hundred metres on Saturday night,” said Rajdeep Singh, an ambulance driver.

A bunch of other ambulance drivers waited outside the hospital for the hours to roll by. “When the wait gets long, we offer the patients the option to avail beds at other hospitals. That is the service we are currently providing,” said Asif Ali, an ambulance driver.