Bed occupancy in COVID-19 wards at the four government medical college hospitals in Chennai have dipped due to the decline in fresh coronavirus infections.
Nevertheless, the hospitals are retaining the beds allocated for such patients with one of the main facilities — Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH) — starting to streamline the inflow of patients with COVID-19 to two blocks.
With 1,498 beds in total, the RGGGH presently has 313 patients in COVID-19 wards. Of this, 136 persons are positive and the remaining are those suspected of having symptoms.
“A majority of the beds are vacant. We have started to wind up COVID-19 wards established in normal wards. We have handed over some of the wards in other blocks to the parent departments such as medicine, gastroenterology and geriatrics. We can take over the wards again if required. We are streamlining patient inflow to two blocks — four floors in Tower-3 and four floors in the rheumatology block. We have four wards in Tower-3 for COVID-19 patients, asymptomatic persons, those with suspected symptoms and comorbidities,” E. Theranirajan, RGGGH dean, said.
Regular services, including emergencies and elective surgeries, have resumed at the RGGGH, with at least 20 emergencies and 25 to 30 elective surgeries taking place per day.
The hospital’s non-COVID-19 in-patient count stood at 1,200. “We have also reduced the number of doctors on COVID-19 duty in a cycle from nearly 240 to 90 now,” he added.
There are a total of 1,200 beds for COVID-19 at the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital. “After discharging, we have 215 COVID-19 patients as of Sunday. We have been told to retain the bed strength till December to see if the graph is still on the decline. The inflow of patients has been declining in the last two months as we had 400 patients earlier and this subsequently reduced to 300,” P. Balaji, dean of the hospital, said.
Till Sunday, the hospital recorded 15 new admissions, he said, adding that the number was around 40 to 45 usually. “The number of non-COVID-19 admissions has increased. Of the 1,600 beds, we have 960 patients now,” he said.
The Government Medical College Hospital, Omandurar Estate, currently has around 230 in-patients.
Lessening severity
“There is a 30% dip in bed occupancy when compared to last month. The severity of the disease has come down marginally. People must follow precautionary measures,” R. Jayanthi, dean of the hospital, said.
More than 60% of beds were vacant at the Government Kilpauk Medical College Hospital, dean P. Vasanthamani said. The hospital is maintaining 550 beds for COVID-19 patients, and the inflow of both in-patients and out-patients for COVID-19 was around 30 to 40% now, she said.
Senior doctors said that the decline in fresh infections had given breathing time for doctors, nurses and hospital staff.
