As the number of cases goes down, with a little fluctuation, doctors say most of the admitted patients are presently incidental admissions wherein the primary reason of admission has been some other disease treatment. Doctors have attributed this to the patients visiting the emergency ward of the hospital complaining of other diseases apart from covid. But as per the standard protocol patients have to mandatory undergo RT PCR before getting admitted due to which they are turning to be covid positive following which beds are getting used.
According to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) dashboard, 547(43.69%) of the 1252 ICU beds at the private hospitals are occupied similarly 241 (46.34%) of the 520 ventilator beds are occupied by the patients, while 33 per cent of 3,982 oxygen beds have also been occupied.
Santosh Shetty, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani hospital said most of the beds are occupied by the patients who are coming to emergency wards and need to be hospitalised. They have been getting many patients complaining of several diseases such as heart problems, diabetes, hypertension dialysis etc following which they have to be tested for covid before admitting.
“When we tested these patients some of them turned out to be covid positive due to which they have to be admitted to the covid wards resulting in beds getting filled. However patients are being shifted to another ward after three to four days,” he said.
Dr Mala Kaneria, Consultant, dept. Of Infectious Diseases, Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre said they are amid an Omicron dominated third wave of COVID 19. However, cases due to the Delta variant are also co-existing due to which hospital beds are quickly getting occupied.
However, most of the COVID admissions are of individuals with other comorbidities, who are mildly symptomatic for COVID 19, many of these not even requiring oxygen.
“Many of the indoor patients are those who were admitted for other ailments (eg. cardiac, liver, kidney problems or surgical complaints ) and are incidentally detected to be positive for SARSCOV2, whilst in the hospital. Pregnant women too are getting admitted, but mainly for pregnancy-related issues and are largely asymptomatic from a COVID point of view,” he said.
Dr Sujit Chatterjee, CEO, Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital said RT-PCR is a must for any kind of admission.
“We have been seeing cases of people who get admitted for various kinds of surgeries even in pregnant women who are admitted for deliveries and testing positive. We come to know that the said patient is positive only when we conduct RT-PCR Test just before surgeries,” he said.
As per the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation report, out of 38116 available beds, only 5265 beds are presently occupied. Of the total people tested positive, on an average, 83 percent are asymptomatic.
Number of Beds
ICU
Private- 1252
occupied- 547- 43.69%
vacant-705
Public- 1866
occupied-464- 24.60%
vacant-1402
OXYGEN BEDS
Private- 3982
occupied- 1314-33%
vacant-2668
Public- 8315
occupied-930- 11.18%
vacant-7385
Ventilator BEDS
Private- 520
occupied- 241-46.34%
vacant-279
Public- 992
occupied-349- 35.18%
vacant-643
