Health department told to increase ICU beds for Covid patients

Keeping in mind the consistent upward trend of Covid-19 cases in Gurugram and fast occupancy of hospital beds, the district health department has been told to urgently

Keeping in mind the consistent upward trend of Covid-19 cases in Gurugram and fast occupancy of hospital beds, the district health department has been told to urgently increase intensive care unit beds (ICU) reserved for coronavirus patients.

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The department will prepare a micro-plan to tackle the current Covid-19 situation as directed by Niti Aayog on Friday in a meeting held with officials of the Delhi-NCR region regarding a record spike in Covid-19 cases.

On Friday, Gurugram recorded 797 new infections, taking the tally to 38,368. Out of these, 6,219 are active cases currently in home isolation or in hospital.

At least 31,910 people have recovered and 239 have succumbed to the illness, with three deaths in the last 24 hours. With cases growing at a weekly positivity rate (the percentage of positives out of the total samples tested in a day) of nearly 18%, the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus has accelerated.

The hospitalisation data shows that on Friday, 744 beds out of 1,975 reserved for Covid-19 patients in different hospitals were occupied, including 408 patients from Gurugram and the remaining from Delhi, parts of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and other states.

Data also shows 70% of the allocated intensive care unit beds (260) were also occupied.

“Niti Aayog has suggested a set of urgent actions to be taken, including immediate increase of ICU and overall beds. The decision will be taken after Diwali, with a notification likely to be issued next week on increased bed capacity,” said Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer, who attended the meeting along with other district administration officials.

Yadav did not mention the increase in reserved bed capacity. Currently, it is 35% in 42 hospitals.

Rajeev Arora, additional chief secretary, health department, said, “The decision will be taken as per the local needs. Since the numbers vary across districts, there is no blanket order as of now.”

The district health department will work on the micro strategy to focus on other urgent steps such as strengthening surveillance of home-isolated patients.

“Even asymptomatic or those with mild symptoms have to follow strict isolation measures to prevent entire family from getting positive. The plan is to enforce strict quarantine of contacts, increase testing, mobilising doctors and nurses and enforcement of standard operating procedures in containment zones,” Yadav said.