The West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission has appealed to people to alert them if a private hospital refuses to admit a Covid patent citing lack of beds.
Healthcare institutes said they were facing a crisis of beds because of the huge number of Covid and non-Covid patients turning up for admission.
Officials of several private hospitals said the situation was likely to worsen because, given the number of non-Covid patients, they could not increase the number of Covid beds beyond a point.
“All are requested to bring to our notice if there is any refusal of admission due to non vacancy in any CE (clinical establishment) so that the matter may be taken to resolve and redirect where admission can take place,” the commission said in an appeal to people on Friday.
The Bengal government on Monday asked private hospitals to increase the Covid bed count or reopen satellite centres they had been running last year for Covid patients, the request triggered by an alarming rise in the number of people testing positive for the coronavirus.
Several private hospitals said they had closed the satellite units following a sharp drop in the number of Covid patients towards the end of last year, a trend that persisted for several more weeks before cases started rising again early March.
“Private hospitals have been told to increase the number of beds. At the same time they should explore the possibility of reopening satellite facilities as the number of cases is rising sharply in and around Calcutta,” an official of the state health department said after a meeting between the department and private hospitals on Monday.
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At Belle Vue, 50 persons were administered the doses on Monday. Of them, 11 had walked in without prior registration, said officials.
“We have nine laptops dedicated to helping people get themselves registered. It is done on a first-come-first-served basis,” said Pradip Tondon, CEO, Belle Vue Clinic.
At Medica Superspecialty Hospital, 150 people from the general public were administered Covid shots. Of them, more than 100 went to the hospital for spot registration, said officials.
Six employees were posted at the registration help-desk, while three to four others were moving around, helping people fill in the forms. “Because of frequent glitches in the Co-Win 2 portal, it was taking 20 to 25 minutes on an average for a registration,” said an official of Medica.