Bed occupancy rising steadily for 1 wk, at least 124 now on O2

New Delhi: With Health Minister Satyendar Jain telling the Assembly here that their government will consider more Covid curbs only if the bed occupancy is seen rising and the Delhi Disaster Management set to meet today (Tuesday) to discuss sounding the "red" alert - the highest level of restrictions - hospitalisation rates in the Capital have been increasing gradually but steadily throughout the last week.

As per the December 27 health bulletin released last Monday, the city had just 266 Covid patients in hospitals with none at Covid Care Centres or Covid Health Centres. By this Monday, the number of people hospitalised had risen to 420 - which includes 66 suspected Covid patients.

Significantly, the number of patients requiring oxygen beds has also been consistently rising in the last week. According to the last available data from the Delhi health department, the number of patients requiring oxygen support was at 82 as of December 31. But according to the bulletin issued on January 3, the number of patients requiring oxygen support had risen to 124. Along with this, the number of Covid patients on ventilator support has also increased to seven now.

Significantly, Health Minister Jain on Monday reiterated that there is no need to panic because the Omicron variant driving this surge was very mild and that the hospitalisation rates are still very low. He added that restriction would be upped considering the bed occupancy in the city.

Despite the gradual rise in the hospital bed occupancy here, the Delhi government has said that they still have over 8,600 hospital beds for Covid patients vacant in the city.

The 420 hospital beds currently occupied by Covid patients and suspects comprise just around 4.65 per cent of the total bed capacity in the city for now. In addition to the existing hospital beds, the Delhi government has now already started reopening large Covid Care Centres for treating mild and asymptomatic cases coming in.

Moreover, Covid hospital beds in the city are now filling faster than they were in the last week of December last year. In fact, as of 11:30pm on Monday night, the Delhi Corona application showed that a total of 444 Covid-19 hospital beds were occupied, of which 421 were beds with oxygen support. The mobile application said that 111 ICU beds were occupied and 47 ICU beds with ventilators were taken.

While the Graded Response Action Plan has set restriction levels based on three parameters — with alerts kicking in if either one of the parameters qualify — there is yet no clarity on whether these parameters will be changed in the upcoming DDMA meeting.

While currently Yellow level restrictions are in place, the city's cumulative weekly new cases and daily positivity rate have already crossed the point at which the "red" alert should have been declared. But keeping in mind the severity of the current wave, the DDMA and the Delhi government said they would wait for the bed occupancy criteria to be fulfilled before increasing curbs. The bed occupancy criteria for issuing a red alert is at 3,000 occupied beds.

But even as authorities say they are waiting for this criterion to be fulfilled, experts have suggested that the sheer speed of the spread of Omicron might inundate hospitals with patients even if the percentage of people needing a bed is lower compared to the Delta wave.