Scramble for beds in Kolkata as Covid bomb hits home – Times of India

Senior physician Sukumar Mukherjee, who is at the forefront of strategising the state’s Covid response as part of the expert committee, faced immense problems getting beds for three patients, one of them a former judge, and the other a relative.
Another senior health department official who is coordinating Covid management had a trying time finding a bed for a relative.
A 45-year-old south Kolkata resident, who collapsed at home on Friday night, was taken to five hospitals along the Bypass, but none could admit him for want of a bed. The family managed to persuade a small nursing home to take him in.
An acute shortage of Covid beds threatens to overwhelm Kolkata in the middle of a swirling second wave. On a day the daily case-rise in the city crossed the 2,000 mark — the highest since the pandemic began — several city hospitals reported that they were running to capacity, even as others said they were almost full.
“Almost 86% of the total bed strength has now been pressed into Covid care service,” said Pradip Tondon, CEO, Belle Vue Clinic, adding, “All 167 beds, including 37 meant for critical care, are occupied. If any new positive patient comes in before a vacancy arises, we have to request the family to take the patient to another facility as we cannot admit the patient in the non-Covid ward.”
Mukherjee, whose example has been cited above, said: “I had a tough time getting patients admitted. Over the past 24 hours, I tried to get beds for three patients — a former chief justice of Bombay High Court, an actor and relative of mine. Hospitals are out of beds. I had to plead with authorities of a private hospital to get two of them admitted. I found space for the third at the ID Hospital.”
There are 5,157 Covid beds in the city. Officially, Kolkata had 13,773 active cases on Sunday, with 2,197 new cases reported over the last 24 hours.
Across Bengal, too, the new case count (8,419) was the highest ever, taking the total active case count to 49,638.
With Kolkata the epicentre of Bengal’s second wave, most hospitals have set up help desks, where they are noting down contact details of patients, with a brief note on the patient’s condition, so that they can prioritise and call back when beds are available.
Luckily, most people are calling up beforehand to find out about vacancies. “Had they landed up at the hospital, the situation would have been worse. As soon as we have a vacancy, we are calling in a patient on the basis of his or her condition,” said Sudipta Mitra, Peerless Hospital CEO. On Saturday, the hospital called in a 50-year-old patient who had been admitted in a nursing home. The patient had mild hypoxia and the family wanted to get her admitted to a bigger facility.
At Apollo Gleneagles Hospital, each of its 56 Covid beds are occupied. “We will scale it up to 100 beds in the next two days. In addition, we plan to take over an adjacent hotel and utilise it for the treatment of Covid patients. In such a case, we will be able to have 60 more beds in this hotel, where we will put in our doctors, nurses and other support staff,” said Rana Dasgupta, CEO (Eastern Region), Apollo Hospitals group.
Simmardeep Gill, the COO of CK Birla Hospitals CMRI, said they were “constantly expanding” their Covid beds. “Currently, all our 130 beds, including 44 critical care beds, are full. We should be able to add around 25 more beds over the next two weeks,” he added.
Government hospitals, too, are dogged by the massive influx of Covid patients. “From 441 beds, we have increased the capacity to 547 but they are mostly occupied. Unlike the first wave, the patient count is rising so rapidly that it is proving a challenge to keep pace and augment the infrastructure. We are scaling up the bed strength to 713 but we need a lot more,” said Sisir Naskar, superintendent, MR Bangur Hospital.