The Delhi government on Monday declared 14 private hospitals in the city as “full COVID-19” facilities, including Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in Sarita Vihar, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Holy Family Hospital, Max SS Hospital, and Fortis Hospital in Shalimar Bagh. They have been instructed not to admit non COVID-19 patients.
In addition, 19 private hospitals have been directed to reserve at least 80% of their ICU beds for COVID-related treatment and 82 private hospitals have been asked to set aside at least 60% of their ICU beds for COVID patients.
The government added that 101 private hospitals have been directed to reserve at least 60% of their ward bed capacity for COVID-related treatment.
At six Delhi government-run hospitals, the number of ICU beds without ventilator has been increased to 487. There are now 1,913 non-ICU COVID beds in these hospitals as against 1,320 earlier. The six government hospitals are the Rajiv Gandhi Super Specialty Hospital, the Burari Hospital, the DDU Hospital, the Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital, the Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital and the Ambedkar Nagar Hospital.
The move came hours after Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal held an emergency meeting to review the measures taken to minimise the spread of COVID-19 in the Capital. He had instructed officials to increase the number of COVID-19 beds in all government and private hospitals to deal with the surge in the number of cases. He also gave instructions to convert some private and government hospitals to fully COVID-dedicated hospitals.
Mr. Kejriwal said the bed count must be at par with what it was in November last year when the city was witnessing another surge.
“We will further request the Centre to increase COVID beds in Central government hospitals,” the Chief Minister said.
He also urged asymptomatic patients and those with mild symptoms to not go to the hospitals so that beds remain available for the critical COVID patients.
