Chennai, (Samajweekly) Covid patients who are scrambling for beds in hospitals across Chennai are facing problems of no bed availability as there seems to be a mismatch on the actual number of beds available and the number being allotted.
The availability of beds with Oxygen facility in private hospitals is not updated with the portal stopcoronatn.in and people who are looking out for beds are not able to find the beds and the portal has no proper information regarding the number of beds available.
Mahesh Krishnamoorthy of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch while speaking to IANS said, “There seems to be a failure on the part of private hospitals in updating the availability of beds and according to information only 40 private hospitals have updated the details regarding availability of beds while there are more than 180 hospitals in Chennai.”
Most of these hospitals have not updated the availability for days while according to the Covid protocol it has to be updated in 2 hours time. Even in those hospitals whose details are being updated regularly, there are major communication gaps between the person updating the details and the exact availability of beds.
While some hospitals are not even answering the phones, others are not giving admission even if the patient is critical.
Ramachandra Menon, an employee with an MNC while speaking to IANS said, “I was running from pillar to post to get a bed for my uncle who was suffering from Covid. No one was taking my calls and when a hospital finally picked up, they did not allow my uncle an admission citing that he was critical. Luckily for us, we got an admission in Government medical college which saved the life of my Uncle.”
Another complaint is the reply from the helpline number “104” which always says, “No availability of Beds”.
Officials from the Public health department said that this issue will be sorted out soon and that measures will be taken to streamline the availability of beds as well as functioning of the helpline “104”.
