When zero is reason to celebrate at Delhi’s largest Covid facility

“The last patients with Covid were discharged yesterday. Now, we have nil Covid patients in the ward or the ICUs,” said Dr Suresh Kumar, medical director of Lok Nayak Hospital.

There are still patients with long-Covid and post-Covid complications who are following up with doctors at the hospital. “But no new case was admitted on Thursday,” Kumar said.

It’s not just Lok Nayak.

On Thursday, 148 new cases of Covid were reported in the city, with 34 patients admitted to various government and private hospitals with the infection. But according to the government’s Delhi Corona app, there were zero Covid patients in most of the major facilities, such as AIIMS, Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital and Rajiv Gandhi Hospital.

At Lok Nayak, a 50-year-old woman, Phool Kumari, was among the last three patients to be discharged on Wednesday. Like many others during the Omicron-driven surge, Kumari was admitted to the hospital not for Covid but tuberculosis. “For the last couple of days, her condition had stabilised,” said her son Abhi Gupta, 23, who works at a private company in UP’s Gorakhpur.

“The doctors said she just needed to continue taking her medicine for TB and stay in isolation at home. But since her Covid test kept coming positive, they could not discharge her. So, we got a LAMA (Left Against Medical Advice) done,” said Gupta, adding that his mother stays with his elder brother who works in Noida.

Incidentally, on Wednesday evening, Kumari’s Covid test came back negative.

“Her oxygen saturation remained normal throughout the nine days that she was in the hospital. The doctors admitted her because she had a high fever and her lungs were affected by tuberculosis…. We decided to take her to Lok Nayak because we were told it is the best place for people with Covid. And it was very good, the doctors were very nice,” said Gupta.

Taking to Twitter, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain posted: “All the Covid patients of third wave have been successfully treated and discharged from Lok Nayak Hospital. For the first time since March 2020, zero patients of Covid-19 are admitted in the hospital. Salute to the entire medical fraternity for their dedicated service.”

Delhi has witnessed at least five Covid surges so far, with the Delta-driven spike in April-May last year resulting in the maximum hospitalisations and deaths.

There were 28,867 fresh cases reported (January 13, 2022) at the peak of the Omicron-driven wave in Delhi, which was slightly higher than the 28,395 infections reported in a single day (April 20, 2021) during the Delta surge.

However, hospitalisations peaked at 2,734 (January 19, 2022) for the Omicron wave as compared to 20,142 (May 3, 2021) during the Delta spike. Also, the highest number of deaths recorded in a day during the last wave was 45 (January 22, 2022), as against 448 (May 3, 2021) during the previous big surge.

Lok Nayak was one of the first four hospitals in Delhi to start admitting Covid patients in March 2020 along with the Centre-run Safdarjung hospital, RML Hospital, and AIIMS trauma centre. It began with a 34-bed isolation ward followed by the entire 2,000-bed facility becoming a Covid treatment centre with oxygen supply at almost all beds.

The hospital had treated over 10,000 Covid patients and delivered hundreds of babies of Covid-positive mothers even before the second wave — the latest data is yet to be compiled by the hospital.