City reels under acute shortage of beds

New Delhi: As Delhi's Covid situation seems to be going out of hand, positive patients are now back to bearing the brunt of lack of beds in both private and government hospitals.

70-year-old Laxmi, who is a resident of South Delhi had to struggle for two days and even then she was not able to get one. "My mother tested covid positive a week back. She is aged and also has hypertension. On Saturday, her oxygen level started going down and our family doctor asked us to get her admitted, but despite calling at least 6-7 hospitals we could not get her admitted," Laxmi's daughter-in-law Sakshi told Millennium Post.

Only 511 of the 1,852 ICU beds are available in government-run and private hospitals, according to the city government's "Delhi Corona" application. Meanwhile, out of the 1,153 ventilator beds, only 307 are available for Covid-19 patients.

The situation has created panic like state in the national Capital which has seen a dramatic surge in cases in the last few days. On calling hospitals like Manipal, Aakash Healthcare and Fortis — out of which two were Covid dedicated in the first wave — authorities said that there are no Covid beds available. Amid the growing cases, hospitals have seen a sudden surge in admissions since the end of March, affecting OPD services and other surgeries.

Niharika, who had to get her mother admitted as she started facing breathing issues, called finding a hospital bed a "nightmare". She said that almost all hospitals said that there are no beds available, which is why she got her mother admitted at a private hospital far away from home.

Medical experts have observed that the infection in the current wave is more dangerous than in the previous waves. "The infectivity this moment is quite high, which only means that the transfer capacity of this virus has increased," Dr Prabhat Ranjan Sinha , Consultant, Department of Internal Medicine at Aakash Healthcare said.