Noida: Admin asks private hospitals to get ready with COVID-19 beds

Taking note of the surge in coronavirus cases, the Gautam Budh Nagar district administration has asked all major private hospitals in the district to prepare beds for Sars-Cov-2 patients in their premises. A final call on whether these private hospitals need to restart their Covid wards is yet to be taken, said officials.

Till January this year, several private hospitals in the district ran Covid-19 wards in the district. However, on January 13, the administration had de-notified most of the private Covid facilities in the district – except for the District Hospital in Sector 39, the Government Institute of Medical Sciences in Greater Noida, Yatharth hospital in Sector 108 and Fortis hospital in Sector 62.

In January this year, the district had a total of 2,964 beds for Covid-19 patients. As of now, the district has a total of 250 beds for Covid-19 patients – 200 in government facilities and 50 in private ones.

According to district magistrate Suhas LY, the decision was taken in light of the increase in cases, which he said was almost three-fold in March as compared to February.

“At present, both the government hospitals – the District Hospital and GIMS – have a capacity to accommodate nearly 600 patients. However, to tackle an emergency situation, all major private hospitals in the district which were serving as Covid-19 facilities during the peak of the pandemic, have been asked to ready beds again. If the graph of new cases increases at the same rate, we’ll take the final decision on making private hospitals dedicated Covid facilities in a week,” he said.

However, they did not specify how many Covid beds each of these private hospitals needs to be ready. As per information received by late Thursday, however, Sharda hospital had been readied a 350-bed Covid facility.

The district’s chief medical officer , Dr Deepak Ohri, said: “At present, only two private Covid facilities – Yatharth and Fortis hospitals – are operative in the district, but their joint capacity of beds is only about 100. If new cases keep coming up at the same rate, we’ll have no option other than to ask private hospitals to restart their Covid-dedicated wards in their premises,” he said.

Additional chief medical officer , Dr Lalit Kumar, who is also the in-charge of home isolation in the district, said that as of Wednesday, out of 331 active Covid-19 patients in the district, as many as 131 were asymptomatic and were permitted home isolation. “The remaining 200 are under treatment in different government and private Covid-19 facilities in the district,” he said.

The country on Thurs reported about 72,000 new cases, with neighbouring Delhi as many as 2,790 fresh cases at a positivity rate of 3.57%. While the national Capital recorded nine deaths, the country recorded an overall 459 Covid deaths in the past 24 hours. Hindustan Times