The number of Covid patients in several private hospitals in Kolkata has gone down to a single digit after almost two months.
Officials of several other hospitals said although the number is still above 10 in their facilities, the occupancy in the Covid ward has come down. The daily new Covid cases in West Bengal have also come down over the last fortnight but doctors said people should not drop their guard.
On Thursday, West Bengal recorded 1,495 fresh cases with seven deaths. On July 14, the number was 3,029 with five deaths,according to the state health department. The rate of positivity has also come down from 18.95 per cent on July 14 to 10.42 per cent on Thursday, the health department data revealed.
“There is a definite dip in infections over the past couple of weeks and if this trend continues then we can expect the end of the current wave in another few weeks. However, we need to continue taking precautions like wearing masks,” said Chandramouli Bhattacharya, infectious diseases expert at Peerless Hospital. “Other factors too that has reduced occupancies in Covid wards,” said Bhattacharya.
These include shifting patients who had been admitted to the hospital with other ailments but detected with Covid incidentally, to non-Covid wards in a short span. “The isolation norms have been relaxed which is allowing us to shift patients with mild symptoms to non-Covid wards in a week,” he said.
Also, with Covid tests not mandatory for all patients getting admitted at hospitals, the detection of incidental Covid is also less, said Bhattacharya. Belle Vue Clinic had 17 Covid patients two days back. “The number has come down to eight on Thursday,” said Pradip Tondon, CEO of the hospital.
Peerless Hospital had more than 20 patients about a couple of weeks back. On Thursday, it had six only. “Our Covid ICU with eight beds was full two weeks ago. Today, we had only one patient who had other comorbidities,” said Sudipta Mitra, chief executive of Peerless Hospital.
RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences had 15 Covid patients admitted on Thursday, which was more than 25 10 days ago.
“The occupancy in Covid critical care has also come down from 12 to 5,” said R Venkatesh, regional director, east and south of Narayana Health which runs the RN Tagore hospital. The hospital is contemplating reducing Covid beds if the trend continued, he said.
A senior health department official said they were keeping a close watch on the changes and would recommend scaling down of Covid beds when the time comes. AMRI Hospitals group has also seen a downward trend in the number of Covid patients admitted.
“There has been a sharp dip in Covid patients admitted at our hospitals.,” said Rupak Barua, group CEO, AMRI.The three hospitals of AMRI at Dhakuria, Mukundapur and Salt Lake had 45 Covid patients on Thursday, compared to more than 120 two weeks back, said Barua.
