Delhi Lt Guv may rope in experts for help to ramp up beds for Covid-19 patients

The state’s health department has estimated that the city would need 80,000 beds to treat serious patients by the end of July. Patients who have mild symptoms are advised to isolate themselves at home.

Updated on: Jun 10, 2020, 19:23:33 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Lt Governor Anil Baijal is learnt to have favoured setting up an expert panel for a quick but detailed prognosis of the coronavirus disease in national capital Delhi to get a clearer picture of its spread over the next few weeks and months.

Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal’s push to seek expert advice comes after a panel set up by the Arvind Kejriwal government indicated that the city’s Covid-19 count could exceed 5 lakh by July 31. (HT file photo)

Baijal also wants the experts to guide how the city could rapidly ramp up beds available for Covid-19 patients without compromising on the quality of medical care to patients, people familiar with the development told Hindustan Times.

Baijal’s push to seek expert advice comes after a panel set up by the Arvind Kejriwal government indicated that the city’s Covid-19 count could exceed 5 lakh by July 31.

The state’s health department has estimated that the city would need 80,000 beds to treat serious patients by the end of July. Patients who have mild symptoms are advised to isolate themselves at home.

In contrast, Delhi has all of nearly 58,000 hospital beds in the government and private sector.

As on Tuesday, Delhi had 8,892 hospital beds for Covid-19 patients, 582 ICU beds, 507 ventilators beds and 3,590 oxygenated-supported beds in Covid-designated hospitals.

The Aam Aadmi Party government had appointed an expert panel in the early stages of the coronavirus disease. The worst-case scenario that this panel had asked the government to prep for was 1,000 new Covid-19 cases every day.

Also read | ‘Delhi L-G Baijal’s orders to be implemented’: CM Kejriwal on hospitals row

Some experts have told the government that the city could expect twice as many cases next week.

It was on account of concerns around the projected spike in Covid-19 cases that Arvind Kejriwal’s cabinet had attempted to shut the doors of the city government’s hospitals to patients from outside Delhi.

That order was, however, overruled by Anil Baijal who cited Supreme Court rulings that right to health is an integral part of right to life.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodi had severely criticised the Lt Governor for this decision yesterday. Today, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said in a video statement that his government would completely abide by Anil Baijal’s decision and moved ahead to battle Covid-19.

Set up electronic dashboards

Baijal has, to help patients running around searching for hospital beds, decided to issue orders to all hospitals to install an electronic dashboard at the entrance that would list the occupied and available beds for Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 patients. The dashboard, which would have to be updated in real time, would also feed hospital beds data to a central control unit to be set up in the Divisional Commissioner’s office.

The government had earlier required hospitals to set up flex board at the entrance that would ask patients to download the Delhi Corona mobile app or check the website, www.delhifightscorona.in/beds, set up by the government to check availability of beds.

But there have been many complaints that hospitals would indicate that the beds were available, only to turn back patients.

Also read | ‘Around 30,000 more Covid-19 cases likely in next 12-15 days’: Delhi health minister

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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