NEW DELHI: How tough is it to get help if someone needs COVID treatment? Quite a task. Given the flood of SOS messages on social media, this reporter did a reality check on the availability of COVID beds in hospitals and the accessibility of state and central helplines.
What came out was that some hospitals — both private and government-run — claimed there were no beds despite the Delhi Corona App showing the availability of beds and ventilators. Also, calls to helplines mostly remained busy despite repeated attempts.
Reacting to reports on shortage of beds for Corona patients, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Friday asserted more than 1,000 patients were admitted to various hospitals in last three days. “If beds were not available, this would have not been possible. The issue is some hospitals are not updating data on the app on time or misrepresenting actual data when patients call. Patients were not getting data on hospitals before which the app is trying to fix,” he said.
For a reality check, calls were made to state, central and private hospitals at their desk or reception numbers to check if they were turning down requests for admissions. The first call was done to Delhi government-run LNJP Hospital. After multiple calls on its helpline, a search led to two more numbers on the National Health Portal. This time the call was received and directed to the chief medical officer who said beds are available and patients can be brought in at any hour of time. The hospital has 2,000 beds of which 968 are available.GTB, Deep Chand Bandhu and Satyawati Raja Harish Chandra hospitals did not receive calls.
At RML hospital which has 23 beds empty, the receiver claimed there was none and advised to take a patient to LNJP, GTB or Safdarjung Hospitals. Calls to Safdarjung hospital went unanswered.
Among private hospitals, BL Kapoor Hospital, which has 93 beds available, claimed all beds are occupied. Primus Hospital, which has 24 beds empty as per the app, claimed it is yet to start Covid service and admit patients.
The hospital administration, meanwhile, claimed it will start receiving patients after 4-5 days and that the hospital’s name was put up on the app without consent.Max Patparganj and Brahm Shakti, both of which have beds available, did not receive the calls.
Maharaja Agrasen Hospital was an exception — true to the app’s information of 14 beds available, the hospital informed no intensive care unit (ICU) beds are empty but general beds are available for those patients who require admission.Central and state helplines also fared no better.At least 10 calls were made at 1075 — the Health Ministry Toll-Free Helpline — for over 40 minutes only to hear the automated message that it ‘doesn’t work’.
Calls to state landline helpline number ‘01122307145’ remained busy for half an hour. Another state helpline 1031 transferred the call and led to an automated system asking the caller to press buttons for more details. The call ultimately ended with an auto generated SMS which had two website links.
While the links did not lead to any web page, the same when searched separately on search engines led to the corona dashboard website showing bed counts and ventilators available.
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