To tackle shortage, PCMC to add 300 ventilator beds, PMC 512

Oxygen beds are also quickly being occupied with only 41 out of 5,689 available on Friday.

Preparations underway for a 100 oxygen bed Covid-19 hospital at Ganesh Kala Krida Rangmanch in Pune on Friday. (Express photo by Arul Horizon)

There are no vacant ICU or ventilator beds at any hospital, even as the city has witnessed over 40 deaths due to Covid-19 each day over the past two weeks. Facing the pressure to provide beds for treatment of critical patients, the PMC has planned to increase its capacity by 512 beds, including 51 ventilators beds, in the next week.

Despite continuously increasing the number of beds, the civic administration is still struggling to meet the need for critical patients. It has no ICU bed, with or without ventilator, vacant for critical patients in the city over the past one week. Oxygen beds are also quickly being occupied with only 41 out of 5,689 available on Friday.

The civic administration is working hard to add to its bed capacity for the treatment of Covid-19 patients and ensure that lives are not lost due to shortage of beds. As on Friday, the PMC made available 10,023 beds for Covid-19 patients, which included 3,132 without oxygen, 5,689 with oxygen, 573 ICU without ventilator and 629 ICU with ventilators.

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“Out of 512 new beds for Covid patients, the PMC has planned to make available additional 368 oxygen, 32 ICU, 51 ventilator and 61 non-oxygen beds. There would be an addition of 170 beds at government hospitals and 342 at private hospitals,” a civic officer said.

The PMC has taken over ESI hospital and will make 80 beds, including 60 oxygen, operational on April 19, and 20 ventilator beds on April 21. Similarly, it will add 50 beds, including five ventilator beds, 10 ICU beds and 35 oxygen beds at the jumbo facility at CoEP by Saturday. It will also increase 10 ventilator beds at Baner hospital by April 21, while two ventilator and 28 oxygen beds will be made operational on the same day.

It is also trying to increase beds at private hospitals, and 127 beds of Orange hospital will be added by April 20. It will consist of five ventilator beds, 22 ICU beds and 100 oxygen beds. As many as 40 beds each, without oxygen and with oxygen, will be made available at Sai Shen hospital.

The other private facilities where beds will be made available are Shree Ayurveda and Panchakarma hospital, Ashtanga hospital, Shatayu hospital, Morya hospital, Agarwal hospital and Shwas hospital.

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In the last 15 days, the PMC has been able to increase its capacity by 847 beds at private hospitals and 566 beds at government facilities. To meet the demand of increasing number of critical patients, the civic administration has been able to convert 10 oxygen beds at Baner hospital to ventilator beds, 10 without oxygen beds to oxygen in Dalvi hospital and 75 without oxygen beds to either oxygen or ICU beds at jumbo hospital.

Hospitals running out of ventilator beds in Pimpri

With private and civic hospitals running out of ventilator beds for critical Covid-19 patients, the PCMC has decided to move swiftly and add 306 ventilator beds to its hospitals to ease the current crisis.

“In the next 10 days, PCMC hospitals will have 306 ventilator beds… Of these, 216 will be installed by the PCMC while we will get 90 beds through CSR funds,” said PCMC spokesperson Shirish Poredhi on Friday evening.

As of now, the Nehrunagar jumbo hospital has 60 ventilator beds. “This will increase by 40 beds, taking total ventilator beds to 100,” he said.

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At the Auto Cluster facility, 14 ventilator beds are available. This will go up to 30. “We are adding 16 more ventilator beds at Auto Cluster facility,” he added.

At Thergaon, Jijamata, Akurdi and Bhosari hospitals, run by the civic body, 160 more ventilator beds will be available. “Each will get 40 ventilator beds,” Poredhi said.

Civic officials said some companies have come forward and donated 90 ventilator beds. “Of these, we have received six ventilator beds and are expecting 84 more in the coming days,” said Kiran Gaikwad, a senior PCMC officer.

As on Friday, there are 600 critical patients at private and PCMC hospitals in Pimpri-Chinchwad. Dr Anil Roy, PCMC health chief, said though beds in ICUs without ventilators are available, but not a single bed with ventilator was available in over 100 private hospitals and five PCMC hospitals till Thursday evening. By Friday, though PCMC hospitals had no ventilator bed available, private hospitals had four beds.

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At civic-run YCM hospital, there are 70 ventilator beds in all and in two to three days, it plans to add 15 more ventilator beds. Dr Rajendra Wable, YCM hospital and medical dean, said, “We have 70 ventilator beds as of today (Friday). In the next couple of days, we will add 15 more. These ventilator beds were kept for non-Covid patients in our second ICU. However, since YCMH has become a dedicated Covid hospital, we have decided to convert the non-Covid ICU to Covid ICU.”

Dr Wable said there was a massive demand for ventilator beds, not only from PCMC areas but also from PMC and other neighbouring talukas.

Ajay Jadhav

Ajay Jadhav is an Assistant Editor with The Indian Express, Pune. He writes on Infrastructure, Politics, Civic issues, Sustainable Development and related stuff. He is a trekker and a sports enthusiast. Ajay has written research articles on the Conservancy staff that created a nationwide impact in framing policy to improve the condition of workers handling waste. Ajay has been consistently writing on politics and infrastructure. He brought to light the lack of basic infrastructure of school and hospital in the hometown of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde even as two private helipads were developed by the leader who mostly commutes from Mumbai to Satara in helicopter. Ajay has been reporting on sustainable development initiatives that protects the environment while ensuring infrastructure development. ... Read More

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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