Recovering from third wave: As cases fall, Covid wards start clearing out

As daily fresh Covid cases show a steady decline, the Covid-19 wards in hospitals across the country are now almost vacant.

While 25,920 new cases were reported in the last 24 hours (as on February 18 morning), 66,254 patients have recovered during the same time.

This reflects the story in the Covid wards.

In Delhi’s Lok Nayak Hospital — a dedicated Covid facility, there are 15 Covid patients compared to about 60 two weeks ago. The hospital has a 750-bed facility across two units.

“The patients coming to hospital are usually serious cases. We have only eight patients in the ICU. It is not in our hands to reduce the number of dedicated Covid beds. This call has to be taken by the government,” said Suresh Kumar, medical director, LNJP hospital.

One of the largest hospital networks in the country, Fortis Healthcare, roughly has 7 per cent of its beds occupied by Covid patients.

Only 300 beds are occupied by Covid patients of the over 4,000 across the Fortis network level now.

Ashutosh Raghuvanshi, managing director and chief executive officer, Fortis Healthcare, said the demand for hospitalisation was low during the third wave and the hospital network does not have high Covid occupancy.

In fact, going forward, Raghuvanshi does not think that Covid-19 would be a major source of patient admissions as the absolute numbers keep coming down.

Down south, Bangalore-headquartered Manipal Hospitals has 6-7 per cent occupancy in its Covid wards. “The admissions have been steadily coming down. The occupancy was around 40 per cent a month back,” said Dilip Jose, MD, Manipal Hospitals.

Apart from hospital chains, standalone hospitals have also seen occupancies coming down significantly.

“We have no Covid patients in any of our hospitals,” Shuchin Bajaj, founder-director, Ujala Cygnus Group of Hospitals, said.

Joy Chakraborty, COO, 400-bed PD Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai, said they have only five patients in their 91-bed Covid ward.

Hospitals in Mumbai, however, are not allowed to reduce their Covid wards unless the government directs them to do so. Since August last year, when the third wave preparations began, hospitals in Mumbai have been directed to maintain a Covid-19 ward bed count.

Private hospitals are waiting for the government to take a decision on reducing or doing away with dedicated beds for Covid patients. Industry sources said the Delhi government will soon allow all hospitals to take all beds back as normal beds.

Bajaj said the government will take a decision to close such centres as well, depending on how this wave goes and how the anticipation of a new wave.

“There are very few primary Covid hospitalizations, but there are some admissions for other non-Covid illnesses that get diagnosed with Covid-19 on routine testing. Some patients have also needed admissions for management of Covid complications like residual lung damage, etc. Fortunately, numbers in all the above categories are fast falling and we hope the worst is behind us forever,” said Trupti Gilada, consultant physician in infectious disease, Masina Hospital.