Many patients now admitted at hospitals in Calcutta are fit to go home but are requesting for a longer stay because of several reasons, including fear of infecting other family members and lack of isolation facilities, said doctors and hospital officials.
Several private hospitals said they are counselling patients to take discharge and go home, keeping the beds available for people with moderate symptoms.
Saurabh Maji, pulmonologist and critical care specialist at RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences, said in the past couple of days he had to counsel at least 10 patients.
“This time, everyone is scared that the virus is far more contagious than before and so many are concerned about their family members, specially the elderly,” said Maji.
Peerless Hospital has 95 Covid beds out of which 72 were occupied on Friday.
“At least 20 of these patients can be discharged according to the guidelines issued by the state government. They don’t have any symptoms for three days. We have offered them discharge but they are requesting to spend more days at the hospital,” said Sudipta Mitra, chief executive of Peerless Hospital. He said most of them are above 70.
Among the reasons are the fear of family members getting infected, lack of a caregiver and isolation facility at home.
RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences has 111 Covid beds out of which 82 were occupied on Friday.
“About 20 per cent of these patients have no symptoms and can go home but want a longer stay. Many of them have elderly members at home. Our doctors are counselling these patients,” said R. Venkatesh, regional director, east, of Narayana Health, of which the RN Tagore hospital is a flagship unit. He said the hospital has a safe home with 32 beds out of which 29 were occupied, mostly by its staff who have tested positive.
Belle Vue Clinic has 111 Covid beds of which 98 were occupied till Friday evening.
“About 15 per cent of our patients can go home but need more time to make arrangements of isolation and caregiving at home. So they are requesting us to defer the discharge,” said Pradip Tondon, CEO of Belle Vue Clinic.
Tondon said with beds filling up with patients having mild symptoms, the hospital is now planning to start a safe home.
Chandramouli Bhattacharya, infectious diseases specialist at Peerless Hospital, said it was a social problem.
“This time the number of infected people is very high and so many elderly people whose children stay away from the city are feeling vulnerable and need hospital care if they have fever and other mild symptoms,” he said.
“Also even those with family members staying with them, often need hospitalisation even with mild symptoms because of their age and comorbidity.”