MHA forms 10 teams to inspect private Covid-19 hospitals in Delhi

Each team has been assigned between 10 and 13 hospitals for inspection, which will begin within two days, as per the order.

The Union home ministry on Monday formed 10 multi-disciplinary teams comprising doctors and officials from the health and home ministries to inspect 114 private hospitals treating Covid-19 patients in the national capital, a day after a high-level meeting was convened, even as new infections continued their rapid rise in Delhi.

The teams have been asked to check whether the number of ward and ICU beds available in the hospitals is as per Delhi government orders so far. (Sanchit Khanna/HT Photo)

Each team has been assigned between 10 and 13 hospitals for inspection, which will begin within two days, as per the order. “The multi-disciplinary teams are constituted to visit all private hospitals in the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi to check the status of compliance of various directions issued by the ministry of health and family welfare for testing and treating Covid-19 patients,” read the order issued by Gauri Shankar Jha, under-secretary to the government of India.

The teams have been asked to check whether the number of ward and ICU beds available in the hospitals is as per Delhi government orders so far. The teams will also check whether the availability is being displayed in real-time on LED displays and on the Delhi government’s Corona dashboard.

Sunday’s meeting was chaired by Union home minister Amit Shah and attendees included chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, the health ministers of the Centre as well as the state, Delhi’s lieutenant governor and top officials from Niti Aayog, Indian Council of Medical Research and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

The Delhi government had initially reserved 20% of all beds in 117 big private hospitals in the city in May before the first surge, with some hospitals being asked to reserve more than this number.

Then, during the September surge, the government ordered 33 of the biggest private hospitals in the city to reserve 80% of their total ICU beds, an order that the high court stayed. The stay was vacated during the November surge in cases. The Delhi government earlier this month also ordered 14 hospitals to reserve 50% of its total bed capacity for the treatment of Covid-19 patients.

The multidisciplinary team has also been asked to look into whether the hospitals are following the discharge protocols of the health ministry and whether patients were being referred to other hospitals without ascertaining availability of beds in the said hospital.

The teams have also been asked to check whether the RT PCR testing capacity, if available, is being utilised and what the turnaround time of receiving the report is.

The inspection order comes on a day when Delhi reported 3,797 new cases of Covid-19, taking the total tally of the city over 489,000. Only half the usual number of tests — 29,821 — were conducted on Sunday, as per the daily health bulletin. The infection also claimed 99 lives in Delhi, taking the toll of Covid-19 to 7,713 as on Sunday. The 10-day case fatality ratio – the number of people who died among those who tested positive – stood at 1.35%.

“If you look at the proportion of deaths, it is at about 1%. Even the World Health Organization says that if the mortality rate is at 1%, it is good. At the beginning of winters, there is usually an increase in the number of old dying. If you check data from MCD, the total number of deaths is not going up,” Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain said on Monday.

The positivity rate remained a high 12.73%, even as the minister claimed that Delhi had crossed the peak of infections in the “third wave”. As per Sunday’s bulletin, the city had recorded a positivity rate of the 15.3% — the highest in 140 days.

“If the current level of testing is continued, the number of new cases is likely to remain the same for about one or two weeks. At present, about 60% of the Covid-19 beds in the city are occupied, but the occupancy in the ICUs — both with and without ventilators — is quite high. If the situation continues, there will be a crisis,” said Dr Sanjay Rai, who is also one of the members of the teams that have been constituted to inspect the private hospitals.

It was also decided on Monday that around 75 doctors and 250 paramedics of central paramilitary forces will also be flown in from other centres to Delhi to meet the shortage of health workers in the national capital.

In another related development, Union home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla had a meeting with Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan and Delhi’s chief secretary Vijay Kumar Dev to fine-tune the decisions taken during the review meeting on Sunday.