West Bengal: Covid & non-Covid balance may lead to Puja bed challenge at private hospitals

KOLKATA: Extension of Covid units could squeeze room for non-Covid patients in case there is a spurt in their number during the Puja, fear some private hospitals. Even though planned admissions come down to a trickle during the festival, this time it could be different due to a rise in the number of Covid patients seeking re-admission with co-morbidities. A few hospitals have kept some beds ‘flexible’ to be used for either Covid or non-Covid patients, depending on requirement.Most private hospitals augmented their Covid units following a prod from the state government earlier this week.

Peerless Hospital, for instance, has raised the number of Covid beds to 150 with 180 reserved for the rest. This may not be enough to accommodate patients not afflicted with the virus, felt Peerless Hospital CEO Sudipta Mitra. “Over the last 2-3 weeks, we have seen a sharp spurt in the number of Covid-recovered patients returning with severe co-morbidities. They are mostly suffering from interstitial lung disease, cardiac ailments or sodium-potassium imbalance which are leading to prolonged hospitalization. That apart, there are emergency patients who must be accommodated. With nearly half of the beds now reserved for Covid patients, it could be difficult,” said Mitra.
He added that the hospital has kept 20 beds in reserve to be used for Covid or non-Covid patients, depending on the situation.
Charnock Hospital has augmented its non-Covid unit along with increasing the number of Covid beds. It plans to have 103 beds each for the two units by October 31. At present, the hospital has around 70 non-Covid beds but will add 30 more, including 15 ICU beds.
RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS) is in the process of extending its Covid unit ‘anticipating a drop in the number of non-Covid patients’. “We will have 130 Covid beds for the next few weeks whereas we now have a total occupancy of around 380 beds,” said zonal director (East), R Venkatesh.
AMRI Hospitlas has carved out 70 beds from its non-Covid unit to raise the number of Covid beds to 265 across its three units at Dhakuria, Mukundapur and Salt Lake. The hospital, however, doesn’t foresee a jump in the number of non-Covid patients during the festival. “We have been forced to squeeze our non-Covid section to make room for more Covid patients. We still have around 400 beds for non-Covid patients, almost 30% of which remains unoccupied. In any case, the number of patients drops in October so non-Covid admissions shouldn’t be an issue,” said AMRI CEO Rupak Barua.
He, though, said AMRI may not be in a position to further extend its Covid sections. “Accommodating more Covid beds calls for a whole range of infrastructural arrangements which are not easy to make. There is a limit to which we can stretch ourselves,” said Barua.