As of Sunday, Chennai had 1,065 vacant beds in the 21 private hospitals that offer treatment for COVID-19. As many as 98 ventilators in these hospitals were yet to be used, according to statistics provided on the State government’s website https://covid.uhcitp.in/stat- us/dashboard
Though the government had launched a separate dashboard, detailing the number of beds, vacancies in beds and the number of ventilators put to use, it is limited to the city. The corresponding details for the districts have not been provided yet.
On Saturday, actor Kasthuri Shankar took to social media to complain that an elderly woman had struggled to find an affordable facility for treatment of COVID-19. She said the woman, belonging to an influential family in Chennai, had tested positive at a private hospital in Abiramapuram. She was “highly symptomatic”, and “no hospital was willing to admit her, no beds available was the reply at government facilities. They had to pull strings to finally get into a hospital in Porur”, the actor tweeted.
Her tweet appeared on the same day that the government issued an order capping the treatment cost at private hospitals across the State.
Speaking about the government notification, Health Secretary Beela Rajesh said, “There were complaints that an artificial shortage of beds was being created by hospitals.” On Sunday, the number of active cases in the city stood at 10,982.
As for the districts, she said the case load was low, and there had been no issues with regard to availability of beds. The portal would provide the details for districts as well ‘shortly’, she said.
Treatment for COVID-19 is provided free of cost at government hospitals. For nearly three weeks now, government hospitals have been struggling as the case load in Chennai has been steadily increasing.
