Gurugram civic body goes on war mode to reserve beds for Covid patients

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) has set itself a grand aim to tide through the current Covid pandemic — to keep at least 6,000 beds ready for accommodating

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) has set itself a grand aim to tide through the current Covid pandemic — to keep at least 6,000 beds ready for accommodating virus-infected patients.

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Working towards this goal, the MCG is assisting resident welfare associations (RWAs) in setting up isolation centres within their areas, building centres of its own, and reaching out to owners of hotels, guest houses, PGs, banquet halls, educational institutions, and religious and charitable institutions to persuade them to lend their buildings for setting-up temporary isolation centres.

Surender Singh, additional commissioner, MCG said that the civic body has made arrangements to ensure the city has “sufficient” number of beds ready, in the eventuality, that there is a sudden spike in cases.

“Besides having around 1,500 beds located in isolation centres of residential areas, by August 1, we will have at least 4,700 beds on standby. Around 3,500 of these have been arranged in hotels, while 1,200 beds have been arranged in government guest houses and buildings. Currently, the occupancy of beds in hospitals is very low and we believe that the existing arrangement is more than sufficient. However, apart from these 6,000 beds, we have also made preparations in advance and collected requisite information for quickly converting banquet halls, PGs, guest houses, hostels, and educational institutions into isolation centres if beds in hotels, government guest houses and buildings start running low,” said the additional commissioner.

He further said that the MCG presently does not have any “fixed-target” with regard to the total number of beds needed for Covid-19 patients and is making arrangements according to the existing needs.

At present, across 45 public and private hospitals in the city, the district administration has reserved 1,486 hospitals for Covid-19 patients. These include 192 beds in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), 92 beds with ventilator support system, while the remaining are general isolation ward beds.

Till July 23, only 335 — or around 22% — of the total 1,486 Covid-19 beds were occupied.

Isolation centres with RWAs

As cases of coronavirus in Gurugram started to surge in early June, MCG officials reached out to RWAs for setting up isolation centres in their own vicinity.

Between May 31 and June 11, the total number of virus cases in the district saw an increase by at least four times, from 774 to 2,737 cases. The total number of fatalities during the same period saw a six-fold increase from three to 19.

In a nutshell, an isolation centre in a residential area can be as basic as a vacant apartment where each bedroom has two beds, with an attached bathroom, while the hall has basic medical equipment such as oxygen cylinders, oxymetres, thermometer, BP machine, IV drip, and a variety of vitamin, fever, and cough tablets.

The same equipment and facility could also be set up in the local community centre, clubhouse, vacant in-house playschool, or the RWA’s empty office space which will have spaces to accommodate more beds.

MCG officials said that so far at least 25 RWAs have set up such facilities and cumulatively have around 1,500 beds ready.

Civic body officials claimed that their purpose was not only to reduce the load on hospitals, but to also create the “first layer of treatment” or “segregation” for Covid-19 patients.

The official SOP issued for RWAs, titled the “Guiding document for creating local isolation centres (Covid Care Centres)” states that the purpose of creating such an infrastructure is to separate asymptomatic and mild Covid-19 patients from the community, monitoring them to see if they develop more serious symptoms of Covid-19, and accordingly provide them with preventive care.

“As per the guidelines listed in the SOP, we have set up an isolation centre in our society last month, which has provisions of accommodating six residents at any given time. We have kept one more apartment empty to quickly accommodate six more residents if a need arises. Even though we have had 10 cases in our society so far, we haven’t faced an instance yet when a resident needed to avail the facility. Regardless, the option of having one, has assured residents to some extent,” said Puneet Goyal, president, Tulip Violet RWA.

The SOP clearly stated that the facility is not for “serious/critical” Covid cases, but should have provisions for giving emergency oxygen therapy to a patient.

“The rationale behind creating isolation centres within residential areas was to ensure that mild and asymptomatic cases do not need to go to hospitals and occupy beds. Instead, if they didn’t have adequate space to self isolate within their homes, they have the option of using the isolation centres within their residential area. The biggest advantage of this was that the health centres could focus on severe cases and give such patients adequate care,while the mild cases could self isolate and make-do with basic treatment, if needed,” said Vinay Pratap Singh, commissioner, MCG.

In the SOP, MCG has prepared guidelines on the requisite medical equipment, health management, do’s and dont’s for attendants, protocol for transfer to health centres and waste and disinfection management for RWAs to follow.

Community Centres

Although at a very nascent stage, the MCG is also looking to create another “layer of segregation” for patients by creating isolation centres in sector community centres, where Covid patients who need oxygen support but not ventilators can be kept for treatment.

Currently, the MCG is in the process of setting up its first-such infrastructure at a community centre in sector 27 and has already arranged 50 beds for the facility through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds. At the facility, officials said that over 100 patients can be treated by doctors from the district health department or any volunteer doctors from private hospitals that are IMA recognised.

“Between asymptomatic, mild, and severe cases of coronavirus, we wanted to create an extra layer of segregation to help further reduce the load on hospitals. At a few community centres, we are aiming to create facilities that can give treatment to those Covid-19 patients that only need oxygen support. We are aiming to start this in sector 27 on a pilot basis and depending on its success replicate the same in other areas,” said a senior MCG official in its health branch.

Back-up isolation centres

As a last resort, the MCG is also making preparations for the worst-case scenario where the existing isolation centres in RWAs, community centres, and hospital beds, all run out of space.

The civic body has identified at least 1,360 properties, which include banquet halls, clubs, hotels, guest houses, paying guest accommodations, hostels and religious institutions as potential sites for establishing such backup isolation centres, if need be.

Using data from its property tax records and with the help of locals RWAs, the MCG has identified 64 banquet halls, 57 clubs, 174 hotels, 321 hostels, PGs, guest houses, and 744 religious and charitable institutions in the city as potential isolation centres.

Separately, around 5,000 institutional properties such as schools, universities, and government buildings are also being monitored by the civic corporation as potential sites.

Out of the 1,300 such buildings, with the help of RWAs, the MCG is currently in the process of further sub-categorising the properties that meet its demand.

“Only those properties that aren’t located in congested, narrow lanes, and are situated in secluded spots and have enough space to accommodate more than 30 beds are being considered. We are in the process of further identifying such properties with the assistance of locals RWAs. Once identified, either the RWA or the MCG will approach owners of such establishments for further assessment,” said the MCG additional commissioner.

He further said that owners of such establishments — who show interest in leasing their properties for setting-up isolation centres — will be asked to give details such as the total number of beds that can be accommodated in their building, types of entry and exit, the type and number of toilets, water connection, electricity connection, for creating a database.

Singh further said that the first stage of segregation has already been done by the MCG and found that 93 of the 174 identified hotels met all the required norms

“Our first stage of isolation centres would be in hotels, and then banquets halls. When both these facilities start running out of space, then we will approach owners of other buildings for leasing their infrastructure. We are simply preparing for the worst-case scenarios and are in the process of creating a database which can be used for setting-up isolation centres even at short notice in the future,” said Singh.