Hospitalisations up as pvt hosps asked to save beds
New Delhi: Even as the Capital reported another record surge in Covid-19 cases, the Delhi government's health bulletin showed that hospitalisation is now starting to increase faster than before with 531 patients (including 41 Covid suspects) now in hospital.
And while the hospitalisation rate (active cases : hospitalised patients) was recorded at a little over 3 per cent as per Tuesday's health bulletin, the Delhi Corona app, which records real-time bed occupancy data showed that at 11 pm on Tuesday a total of 622 beds were occupied in the Capital.
Significantly, the number of people admitted to hospitals for Covid has seen a gradual but steady increase as per official figures since the last week of December 2021. While only 266 patients were hospitalised as per the bulletin on December 27, this has now clearly risen.
Moreover, the number of patients on ventilator support has doubled from seven (as per January 3 bulletin) to 14 (as per Tuesday's bulletin) even as the number of patients on oxygen support rose to 168,
The Delhi government has consistently maintained that the information available so far indicates that hospitalisation rate for the Omicron-propelled wave is very low but experts have said that the sheer size of this wave could overwhelm hospitals given the absolute numbers — even if the hospitalisation rate remains low. At Tuesday's DDMA meeting, officials were told by experts that the active case count could peak at 10 lakh this wave which meant that even at a 4 to 5 per cent rate of hospitalisation, the city would require 50,000 beds. Currently, the Delhi Corona application shows that the city has 8,986 Covid beds, 8,373 oxygen beds, 2,779 ICU beds, and 1,327 ventilator ICU beds vacant.
In addition, the Delhi government on Tuesday ordered all private hospitals and nursing homes in the city with 50 or more beds to go back to reserving 40 per cent of their bed capacity exclusively for Covid-19 patients. An order from the Directorate General of Health Services here said that the hospitals will have to reserve 40 per cent of their ward beds and 40 per cent of their ICU beds for Covid patients.
Telemetry for monitoring oxygen usage
Meanwhile, the Delhi government has now decided to install 100 remote telemetry devices in all Liquid Medical Oxygen storage tanks (Total capacity of 845.92 MT) installed across 53 private and government hospitals here to measure real-time usage of medical oxygen. During the massive health crisis triggered by the severe shortage of medical oxygen in hospitals here during the second wave, a regular problem officials were facing was to rely on hospitals for reporting of oxygen usage data. A lot of the time, details were lost in the time it took to report the data — which resulted in daily chaos that spilled into courtrooms.
Such telemetry devices will now be able to relay real-time data to the Delhi government so that they can arrange supplies accordingly. In a statement, the administration said it is fully prepared to deal with this wave and that it "is making every effort to improve the health infrastructure, so that all the needy people get life during the pandemic.
