Every City Needs 1,000-Bed Hospital: Association Of Private Healthcare Providers

NEW DELHI: Private hospitals have urged the Centre to earmark a 1,000-bed hospital, preferably government-run, whose capacity can be doubled in every city across the country to treat COVID 19 patients. Every bed in a COVID 19 hospital should have ICU facilities, they said.

Citing data from Italy which showed that mixing led to 40 per cent of normal patients contracting COVID-19, the Association of Private Healthcare Providers – India said a single point of admission will reduce patient movement among multiple hospitals, since there is no central coordinating agency with accurate data on availability of free beds.

“Cities would also need to requisition several hotels that would be dedicated as COVID recovery zones for younger patients, of less than 60, not needing admission. These could be hotels, guest rooms, executive hostels etc,” it wrote to the Union health ministry. The request came even as most states have initiated the process of either earmarking separate hospitals for managing corona patients or have said blocks in identified hospitals will be dedicated for such cases.

“Immediate exercise should be to ascertain number of ICU beds needed in different districts,” the letter read.  “As per data from Wuhan, every major city will need 2.6 ICU beds per 10,000 adults. Every bed in the COVID hospital needs to be an ICU bed.” A city like Bengaluru with 10 million people, the AHPI estimated, may need at least 2,000 beds at peak outbreak.  “This can become our rough guideline for identifying beds to be kept in readiness. Delhi may need 3,000, Mumbai 2,500 beds etc.”

Fortis healthcare has set up isolation wards in all of its 28 hospitals and earmarked 262 isolation beds for treating corona patients. “The medical teams at Fortis are already treating 21 positive cases along with 87 suspected cases at various hospitals. Two COVID-19 patients are all set to go home after their discharge from Fortis, Gurugram,” it said.

–New Indian Express