Railway coaches to Ayush clinics, India keeps beds ready with Omicron rise

With Omicron cases on the rise and hospital beds filling fast across the country, various states and the Centre are keeping all the back-up options ready. These include Ayush centres and railway Covid-care coaches on standby mode.

The mainstream infrastructure has already been pushed into action, with hospitals now working to ramp up their Covid wards.

The health ministry said last week that India has 1.8 million isolation beds available across the country, of which almost 500,000 beds are with oxygen support.

It also asked the private healthcare sector to be ‘ready’ and start audits of medicines, oxygen supply and beds.

In case the number of cases increases, the ministry of railways will be keeping its 5,601 Covid-care coaches with as many as 89,500 beds ready.

With the bed-occupancy rate increasing massively in the last seven days, several states have also kept the option of Ayush clinics as a second line of defence.

With a likely spike in cases in January and February, Tamil Nadu has already lined up 80 Covid-specific Siddha centres. These centres were operational during the second wave and later closed down as the state started reporting fewer cases. 

Poll-bound Uttar Pradesh and Manipur saw a series of inaugurations of Ayush hospitals in the last 10 days.

While eight 50-bedded Ayush hospitals were inaugurated in UP, Manipur also saw the inauguration of 15 Ayush dispensaries and seven 10-bedded Ayush hospitals, keeping the cards wide open in case of an emergency.

“I believe that Ayush should be treated not as a back-up but a mainline option in terms of treating moderate, mild and asymptomatic patients. We had seen the results during the first and second waves,” said Sanjeev Sharma, director, National Institute of Ayurveda in Jaipur.

Sharma’s institute already has 150 beds dedicated for Covid patients. At present, India has around 3,986 Ayush hospitals and 27,199 dispensaries. Till the end of July this year, the country had around 1,206 designated Covid treatment centres termed Ayur Raksha clinics.

Hospitals admit that there have been a spike in patient admissions, but they say there was no need to panic yet.

Manipal Hospitals has seen Covid occupancies jump to 5 per cent across its network in the last 10 days. “For the last few months, Covid bed occupancies were steady at 2 per cent of the network beds of 7,600 beds. During the second wave, we consistently had 90-95 per cent occupancy for Covid,” said Dilip Jose, managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO), Manipal Hospitals.

Mumbai-based Hinduja Hospital can activate 90-100 Covid beds if necessary. Chief operating officer (COO) Joy Chakraborty said it had not converted the Covid wards into non-Covid after the second wave. 

Hinduja did not go for temporary staff hiring, but has kept its Covid staff on its rolls.

Mumbai hospitals say that the civic body has asked them to ramp up bed capacities that they had at the peak of the second wave.

Anoop Lawrence, head of operations at Global Hospitals, Mumbai, said hospitals need to be judicious when admitting patients. “Most patients are asymptomatic and can be treated at home easily. We have admitted our transplant patients, as they are already immunocompromised,” Lawrence said.

Smaller nursing homes are better equipped this time around to treat patients, feel industry executives. Lingaiah Amidayala, medical director, Yashoda Hospitals, Hyderabad, said it has a capacity to admit 1,200-1,300 Covid patients during the second wave. He added that smaller nursing homes and hospitals are now confident to treat Covid patients as the clinical management protocol is well established. 

“We are only taking patients if they get severe Covid. Mild to moderate patients can be easily treated at home, or at smaller hospitals. The load on tertiary care hospitals has not yet begun,” he said.

Omicron is at least three times more transmissive than the Delta variant. If numbers keep rising, the pressure on the mainstream health infra would mount soon.