Private Hospitals Struggle Without Ventilators in Nagpur as City Records Around 5,000 Daily Infections

Amid rising Covid infections in Maharashtra, private hospitals in Nagpur were left without a ventilator bed and just 27 ICU beds as critical patients rise in the city on Wednesday morning. In the evening too there were just three ventilator beds available at (Government Medical College and Hospital) GMCH.

The three ventilator beds available at GMCH were taken in a couple of hours. Doctors said that five to ten Covid patients in every ward are now on non-invasive ventilators but they are helpless due to paucity of ICU and ventilator beds, Times of India reported.

There are at least 12 wards having oxygenated, high dependency units and ICU beds in GMCH and Indira Gandhi Government Medical College & Hospital (IGGMCH).

It was for the first time in the city that none of the private Covid hospitals had a single ventilator as all the 271 remain occupied.

The report said that Nagpur has 441 ventilators including 170 in 10 public hospitals. Officials said that the city is in dire need of at least 200 ICU beds on a floating basis per day.

IGGMCH officials said that they are running 540 beds for Covid. “We would require 25 MD doctors to run 30 to 40 more ICU beds. The NMC had advertised these ports but no doctor has joined. IGGMCH too has advertised 30 senior and junior resident posts but they are not likely to apply,” officials reportedly said.

Nagpur district recorded a single-day addition of 5,338 COVID-19 cases and 66 casualties on Wednesday, an official said. With this, the tally of infections in the district reached 2,54,221, while the toll rose to 5,504, the official said.

As many as, 3,868 patients were discharged during the day, taking the count of recoveries to 2,05,784, he said. The district is now left with 42,933 active cases, he said.

With the addition of 19,191 swab samples tested during the day, the total number of samples tested in the district so far reached 17,38,598, the official added.

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