With Coimbatore district seeing a steady increase in the number of COVID-19 cases, several hospitals, especially the ones in the private sector, run at full capacity.
As per the data shared by the district administration, 18 out of 50-odd private hospitals in Coimbatore had their beds allocated for COVID-19 patients occupied on Sunday and Monday. Several other private hospitals had less than 10 such beds remaining vacant.
A private medical college hospital had its 420 beds dedicated for COVID-19 treatment occupied from May 1. Another private hospital had its 267 beds reserved for COVID-19 occupied from Sunday.
The situation was the same at the Government Medical College and ESI Hospital which had patients in all the 680 beds reserved for COVID-19 treatment on Sunday and Monday.
An official from ESI Hospital said it categorised patients before admission depending on the severity of infection and refer patients to the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH) in case of unavailability of beds with life support facilities.
CMCH, which has 1,055 beds reserved for COVID-19 patients, had 282 of them vacant on Monday. All the government hospitals together had 449 beds vacant and a total of 983 out of 4,216 beds in 52 private hospitals were also vacant on Monday evening, according to the district administration.
Private hospital managements said they were in the efforts to increase the bed strength after the State Health Department recently instructed them to allocate a minimum of 50% of their total bed strength exclusively to treat COVID-19 patients.
A senior official from a private hospital said it recently added 100 beds after it faced difficulty in managing the patient inflow.
KG Hospital chairman G. Bhakthavathsalam said the hospital recently increased the bed strength to 265 for COVID-19 patients.
