Ggm: Bracing for the worst, public and pvt healthcare try to ramp up facilities

Gurugram: With the number of Covid-19 cases only increasing by the day in Gurugram, both the public and private healthcare facilities in the city are desperately trying to ramp up their facilities.

On Tuesday, the District Administration placed the order for 20 new ambulances that will be used to ferry mostly the COVID-19 patients. 16 ambulances will have the facilities of a basic support system and four ambulances will have the facilities for an advanced life support system. As of now there were only 10 ambulances that were available with Gurugram public hospitals. The District Administration has also entrusted responsibility to senior bureaucrats for taking stock of the situation of the capacity of the beds.

As per the officials, 925 beds have been reserved for Covid-19 patients at 23 designated hospitals in the city, 625 are still lying vacant. The District Administration is in the process of augmenting the bed capacity to more than 3,500.

As Gurugram struggles to deal with the rising number of patients infected by Covid-19, the District Administration has also begun the process to make its health care system more transparent. Already facing flak over not admitting the COVID-19 patients, the private hospitals in Gurugram have introduce homecare packages where patients are monitored 24x7 by nurses and doctors through video calls.

The private hospitals are also offering to deliver medicines and safety gears at the doorstep of such patients, and if required sample collection too.

For 14-17 days of isolation period, the health facilities are providing comprehensive medical care under these packages, which may cost anything between Rs 4,900 and Rs 25,000.

Taking cognisance of large number of cases of COVID-19 being reported from Gurugram, the District Commisioner Amit Khatri on Friday instructed that 25 percent beds in public and private hospitals should be reserved for COVID-19 patients.