Big hospitals running out of ventilator beds in Delhi

NEW DELHI: The crisis of ventilator beds in Delhi for Covid-19 patients turned more acute on Wednesday with major hospitals like AIIMS, Ram Manohar Lohia, Apollo and Max at Patparganj and Saket running out of such beds in ICUs.

Mechanical ventilation is required to save those Covid-19 patients who are not able to breathe on their own despite oxygen support.

According to real-time data shared by the government’s Delhi Corona app, the capital has 744 ICU beds with ventilator support, excluding 50 such beds at AIIMS-Jhajjar. Of these, 569 — 76% — beds were occupied on Wednesday.

Only seven hospitals in Delhi have five or more ICU beds with ventilator support. These are Lok Nayak (37 ventilator beds), Guru Teg Bahadur (16), Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (13), Lady Hardinge Medical College (12), Rajiv Gandhi Super Specialty (9), and Hindu Rao and Vimhans (8 each). Forty-one hospitals have less than five ventilator beds and 33 hospitals have no such facility.

However, 9,453, or 62%, of the 15,243 general beds reserved for Covid-19 patients are still vacant. Dr Sumit Ray, head of the critical care at Holy Family Hospital in south Delhi, said patients with mild symptoms didn’t require hospitalisation.

“Admission is required only if a person has cough and breathlessness. Such patients need to be put on oxygen support. If that fails to improve breathing, ventilator support is needed,” he said. If ventilator support is not made available to a critically ill patient in time, he may die due to respiratory failure. “We need more ventilator beds and trained manpower to run them,” the doctor said.

On Tuesday, Delhi government issued an order to all state-run hospitals to rework their existing bed capacities in a way to increase the number of ventilator beds over and above the existing beds. Three teams will also conduct inspections of government and private hospitals for rapid assessment of Covid care facilities.

Delhi has witnessed a significant decline in new cases over the past three days. However, the number of daily fatalities continues to be around 60, which is considered very high. From June 17 to July 1, government data shows 966 people died due to Covid-19 in the city.

“It has been observed that many patients who get better, either at home or in hospital, suddenly develop cough and breathlessness in 10th to 12th day of infection and if they aren’t managed effectively, the condition deteriorates very fast leading to fatality,” said a senior doctor. He said patients must be quick to report to hospital if they faced any breathing difficulty.