Sharp fall in cases, but most Covid ICU beds in Delhi remain full

Doctors and government officials said this is because of extremely critical patients reaching hospitals during the peak and long recovery time in ICUs.

Even as Delhi continues to witness a steady decline of daily new Covid-19 cases, the number of seriously ill patients has remained nearly stagnant, with most ICU beds in big private hospitals remaining almost full.

Patients suffering from the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) are seen inside the ICU ward at Holy Family Hospital in New Delhi, India, April 29, 2021. (Reuters)

The number of Covid-19 cases has reduced from a 7-day average of 18,374 (May 3-9) in the first week of May to 3,285 (May 17-23) in the third week of the month, and the number of hospitalisations declined by 33% in this period, but the ICU occupancy has declined by only 5.6%.

Doctors and government officials said this is because of extremely critical patients reaching hospitals during the peak and long recovery time in ICUs.

HT analysed government data between May 10 and May 22 and found that while the number of active cases in Delhi has seen a decline of 67%, and the number of non-ICU patients by 59%, the number of ICU-patients has remained almost stagnant. Indeed, some days including May 12, 13 and 14, the number of ICU patients were even higher than May 10. From May 10 to May 22, the number of ICU patients has declined by 11% -- indicating that the pace of recovery of serious Covid-19 patients is way longer than those with milder symptoms.

During the entire 13-day period, the number of ICU patients in Delhi remained above 5,000 till May 20 . It was only from May 21 that it went down below 5000.

At the worst of this crisis, only 13.6% of Delhi’s Covid-19 beds were empty (16,942 occupied and 2,666 vacant) on April 20, while six days after that the city had completely run out of ICU beds for the general public, according to government data. Currently, of the total 28,485 beds across the Capital, 8,791 are occupied and 19,694 are vacant.

Dr SCL Gupta, medical superintendent of Batra hospital said, “The numbers have started coming down over the last two or three days. But it will take another two weeks for the ICUs to empty out. These are still patients who were admitted during the peak.”

The number of cases in Delhi peaked on April 20, with 28,395; the hospital occupancy on May 6, with 20,117 ; and the number of people in ICUs at 5,813 on May 12.

The longer ICU stay led to a clogging up of the system at the peak, said Dr Sumit Ray, critical care specialist and medical superintendent of Holy Family hospital.

“That is the timeline of Covid-19. Those who get critically ill, tend to have a long hospital stay. In the ICU, those who are not on ventilators take about two to three weeks to recover and those who are on ventilators could take up to a month. During the peak, the beds in ICU were completely full and that is the reason people were running from hospital to hospital,” he added.

However, the availability of ICU beds has improved markedly. But if the current occupancy of ICU beds is just over 62%, it is largely because of ICU capacity added in the city over the last three weeks. The Delhi government created two makeshift 500-bed ICU-only facilities on vacant grounds and attached them to Lok Nayak and GTB hospitals. Another 200 were added at the Radha Saomi facility in Chhatarpur.

“Now, we are getting only three to four patients a day and not all of them need ICU care. So, most of the patients currently admitted to the ICU are those who were taken in during the peak. Patients in ICU, especially those on ventilators, need a long time to recover. The numbers are likely to start coming down over the next couple of weeks,” said a senior doctor from Rajeev Gandhi super speciality hospital who asked not to be named.