Nobody should be turned back from hospitals, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal instructed officials on Thursday at a review meeting on the current COVID-19 situation in Delhi.
He asked officials to ensure adequate health infrastructure for the treatment of patients.
Three-tier arrangement
He added that the focus should be on a three-tier arrangement of health infrastructure in Delhi, of which first is home isolation, second is Covid Care Centres, and third is an increase in beds and facilities in hospitals.
Mr. Kejriwal directed that the two civic body hospitals — Hindu Rao and Swami Dayanand Hospital — be declared as fully COVID, which will lead to an increase of 900 beds for the treatment of patients in Delhi. He also asked for full cooperation and no politics in the matter.
In a statement after the meeting, Mr. Kejriwal said: “I came across a situation recently where when an asymptomatic patient was turned back from admission to the hospital, the patient created a ruckus. This situation should never happen. We must issue an order to allow directing the patients to our COVID Care Centres (CCCs) to make the patient feel safe and in the care of the doctors. More and more patients should be shifted to these centres to cater to very critical patients in the hospitals.”
The Chief Minister directed officials to ensure that all helpline numbers of hospitals should remain fully functional and they must provide an adequate flow of information on the real-time availability of beds.
Requests Centre
The government said it has requested the Centre to make 2,700 additional beds from its hospitals available for the treatment of COVID patients.
“Currently, around 15,048 beds have been made available, of which over 5,000 beds are empty. The availability of more beds will further increase the capacity in Delhi to around 20,000,” the government said.
Addressing the shortage of Remdesivir injections in Delhi, the government said it is expected that 18,000 injections will be made available in Delhi by April 18. The Chief Minister directed officials to prepare an action plan to ensure that there is no dearth and no stocking of injections at any facility in Delhi.
Mr. Kejriwal also said if labs, where the tests are being conducted, are facing problems, orders must be made to reduce the sample size to enable them to issue results within 24 hours.
The health officials also apprised the Chief Minister that vaccine stock is available for the next 6-7 days, the government said.
