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As the demand for beds continues to increase due to the surge in Covid-19 infections, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to start an Oxygen bed facility at the Covid Care Centres (CCC) being set up across the city.
The city is already facing a shortage of ventilator beds for critical patients and in the last few days, patients in need have been struggling to get ventilator support in any of the hospitals in the city. As on Tuesday morning, the PMC dashboard had no vacant Ventilator beds of the total 493 allocated for treating Covid patients. There were only 5 of 432 ICU beds without ventilators vacant that too after the increase in the bed capacity at the jumbo Covid hospital in CoEP grounds.
Of the 4,457 allocated isolation beds with Oxygen, there were only 383 vacant with the demand increasing fast during the last few days. There are 706 of the allocated 4,457 beds without Oxygen vacant in city hospitals.
“The PMC administration has been directed to prepare an action plan to increase Oxygen beds along with beds at the CCC in the city. The plan is to provide Oxygen facility for 10 per cent of the total beds in CCC,” said mayor Murlidhar Mohol after discussing the issue of shortage of beds for treatment of Covid patients in the city.
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Also, the PMC has been asked to rope in Nitya Shradha hospital for Covid treatment. Mohol said the civic body would seek their paid service to run a civic hospital. “The civic administration has been asked to identify more private hospitals in the city that are yet to be included in the civic list of hospitals for reserving beds for Covid treatment,” Mohol added.
The PMC would soon start CCC at CoEP hostel and Agriculture hostel alongwith other locations identified for the CCC with 10 percent beds with Oxygen facility, he said adding, “The PMC is also trying to get in touch with residential hotels and lodges in the city to start CCC to cater to the increasing number of Covid patients in the city.”
The civic administration has been asked to explore the possibility of making use of vacant civic buildings constructed for schools or other purposes for starting Oxygen bed facilities. The bed capacity at civic hospitals treating Covid patients is also being increased, Mohol said adding there would be an addition of 200 beds in the next two days by increasing the capacity at jumbo hospital and Dalvi hospital.
As per the PMC report, there are 919 critical patients in the city and 3,952 on Oxygen therapy. A total of 42,741 active patients are in the city and most of them in home isolation.
