Delhi govt to add 100 ICU beds in LNJP by end of July
New Delhi: The Delhi government is set to add 100 ICU beds in the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital here by the end of July, according to Delhi government officials.
"At the beginning of the nation-wide lockdown, the LNJP hospital had 64 ICU beds with the addition of 36 beds in the ICU ward; it was scaled up to 100. Another 100 beds will be added soon," said a Delhi government official on the condition of anonymity. "ICU beds help in saving lives because patients with extreme comorbidities are transferred to ICUs as soon as their condition worsens," added the official.
Meanwhile, documents accessed by Millennium Post showed that of the 80 ventilators in the Delhi government-run hospital, only 21 are now vacant and the hospital has 21 ambulances that have been used since the lockdown.
In the six days between June 6 and June 12, LNJP hospital witnessed 100 deaths of COVID-19 patients, according to the document. At a digital press briefing, on Saturday, CM Arvind Kejriwal had admitted that a shortage of beds had led to a rise in COVID deaths. "Beds were in short supply in the first week of June. Testing was low and because they couldn't get beds in time, more people were dying," he had said. Between June 20 to 26 COVID deaths at the hospital were reduced to 51.
"The number of deaths at the LNJP Hospital has decreased by more than 50 per cent in the last two weeks," said an official from the Health Department. This was largely owing to the increase in the number of beds and ICU facilities in other hospitals in Delhi with several patients being referred to other hospitals as well, added the official.
To further reduce the death toll, the state government has installed ventilators in the casualty ward of the hospital to avoid complications due to low oxygen levels and reduce mortality in the casualty ward, said the official. "The bed capacity in the casualty ward of the LNJP hospital has been increased from 25 beds to 40," stated the document, which added that the number of oxygen beds in LNJP is now 2,000, of which 384 have oxygen pipelines, 1,200 have oxygen cylinders and 416 have oxygen concentrators.
