Odisha: Four expert teams to ease ‘VIP’ load on ICUs in twin cities

The ICU for Covid patients at SCB Medical College and Hospital

BHUBANESWAR: Amid rising load on critical care beds due to surge in Covid infections, the state government on Friday announced a two-pronged strategy. Four teams of experts will visit intensive care units (ICUs) to find out ‘influential’ patients who may be occupying ICU beds unnecessarily. They would be shifted to general beds so that more critical ones in waiting can be admitted to ICUs. Secondly, the government will add 400 more ICU beds within a week.
Additional chief secretary (health) Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra said during daily discussions with doctors, it has come to light that a good number of patients who should be in general beds are in ICUs, mainly in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.
For rest of the state, the medical colleges have been entrusted to filter non-critical patients from being admitted in ICUs, the top health administrator said.
The government has been working on a war footing to add additional 438 beds, including 368 in ICUs and 70 HDU (high dependency unit) beds which are also meant for critical care, within a week in western Odisha besides Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. This would take total ICU/HDU beds in state to 3,472 from the current 3,034, he said.
This would be added in a phased manner, some beds on a daily basis. For example, the SCB Medical College and Hospital will add another 41 beds within the next two days to its 63 beds.
Among others, critical care beds will be added in Vikash Hospital, Bargarh (150 beds), Sundargarh Medical College (50), Bandhbahal Jharsuguda (20), Engineering College, Kalahandi (10), Hi-Tech Bhubaneswar (70) and KIMS Bhubaneswar (50) in next seven days, he said. Vikash Hospital, which was so far been treating Covid patients on payment, was hired by the government as a free facility on public-private partnership.
After an all-time one-day high of 12,390 new infections, the state’s active cases have soared to 1.04 lakh of whom around 14,000 are hospitalised. Among them, 1,400 patients are in ICUs, including 570 on ventilators. The ICU has an occupancy of more than 79% while the occupancy in western Odisha districts is 100%.
Mohapatra said the availability of hospital beds, essential medicines and oxygen is being reviewed on a daily basis.
The beds will be increased further if needed, he said.
State’s oxygen consumption per day on Friday was 56 MT per day against a production capacity of 155.51 MT per day through cylinders and 375 MT through liquid medical oxygen (LMO).
The state’s Remdesivir (100mg) stock is more than 40,000 vials against daily consumption of 2,000 vials per day. The stock of Favipiravir tablet (200mg) is 5.43 lakh against a current daily consumption of around 6,000 tablets.

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