The number of patients reaching city hospitals has dwindled in the wake of the COVID-19 scare.
From over 2,500 out-patients in the largest public hospital, the District General Hospital, the numbers dwindled to 1,124 on Friday. Compared with 500-600 in-patient admissions daily, there were only 326 on the day.
The hospital was choosing which elective surgeries were to be done even as it was awaiting government orders in this regard, said Dr. A. Anitha, hospital Superintendent.
Out-patients at Indira Gandhi Co-Operative Hospital had come down to around 15 patients for a doctor, sometimes going down to even single digit numbers too. The decline was witnessed from Monday. The number of patients had become a trickle in the past two days, said Dr. Sachidananda Kamath, Superintendent of the hospital.
In Devi Hospital in Thripunithura, the number of patients in the OP section came down by about 60%. Very few IP patients were remaining in the hospital, said Deepak Madhavan, director.
Unnecessary crowding in the hospital too had come down, he said. Usually, a baby’s birth got celebrated in the hospital with a lot of visitors pouring in, unmindful of the fact that there were other persons in the hospital who were sick. A person with reduced immunity could contract diseases from the hospital too, however much a hospital tried to keep the area clean, he said.
“We have had visits by a couple of people under quarantine who were connected to the District Control Room immediately”, said Mr. Madhavan. Doctors are also attending to more over-the-phone consultations.
Dr. Kamath is worried about the crowded roads in the city even as many establishments have provided work from home facility or have rescheduled work on a rotational basis. People continue to take things lightly by moving about the streets in large numbers, he said. Even after the State and the Union governments came out with advisories, the number of people on the street was rather disturbing, said Dr. Kamath “The next 10 days are crucial in getting to know the situation in the State and the rest of the country with regard to new cases as well as the treatment outcomes”.
Two superspecialty hospitals are keeping their usual operations on and scheduled surgeries. “However, we are trying to discharge the patients soon so that rooms are made available as a standby”, said Dr. Sanjeev Singh, superintendent, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences. He said there was a fall of about 10-12% in OP patients.
All staff and patients entering Aster Medcity would be screened and it had also reduced the number of entrances to the hospital, said the hospital spokesperson. The numbers in the OP had come down and there were also restrictions in the number of bystanders for patients, he said.
