Hospitals Are Full, and Patients Struggle at Home Due to Sever Wave of COVID-19 in India
Hospitals Are Not Taking Patients Due to Lack of Availability of Beds or Oxygen Supply
As the hospitals located in major cities of India, including Delhi, are currently running out of beds, the general population of the country is being forced to find other ways to get treatment for the patients with illness at their own residents. Numerous individuals have turned toward the black market as the number of active confirmed cases of COVID-19 in India is surging at a rapid rate.
People are buying essential medications, cylinders for oxygen, and concentrators for which the price tags have skyrocketed, and various questionable drugs have begun to multiply across the country as the number of active cases of COVID-19 in India is increasing.
Surging cases of COVID-19 in India
On Monday in the last week of April, India has been able to record a new global high for the daily active confirmed coronavirus cases for at least five days straight at 352,991.
Anshu Priya, a resident of India, was unable to get a bed in a hospital in the city of Delhi or the suburban area of Noida for her father-in-law as his medical condition continued to decline over time. She spends a major part of her day on Sunday looking for an oxygen cylinder, but the search was pointless.
After this, she turned towards the black market to accommodate her needs, and in turn, had to pay the hefty price of 50,000 rupees (which is equivalent to around $670) for an oxygen cylinder which usually costs around 6,000 rupees. As her mother-in-law was also struggling to breathe properly, Anshu realized that the shoe might not be able to find another cylinder of oxygen on the black market.
This is a story that is familiar not just in the city of Delhi but can also be observed in other major cities across the country, including Indore, Allahabad, Lucknow, and Noida. The general population throughout the country is desperately trying to combine together makeshift arrangements with their residents, as the active patients suffering from COVID-19 in India are on the massive rise.
Although most of the population across Indian would be unable to do so as they cannot afford this, there have been several reports of individuals dying while being at the doorstep of general hospitals due to the fact that they are unable to afford to buy the essential drugs and an oxygen cylinder on the country’s black market.
When contacted, various suppliers for oxygen cylinders asked for at least ten times the normal amount for a single cylinder, as there has been a rapid rise in the cases of COVID-19 in India. The situation in India has become dire in major cities as there are no empty beds in intensive care units of the medical care facilities. The families of the patients who are able to afford are currently hiring nurses along with consulting medical practitioners remotely for keeping their family and loved ones to keep on breathing.
Overrunning of medical facilities
The entire country is struggling to get blood tests or getting a proper chest x-ray or CT scan. The laboratories are overrun, with cases require at least three days to get the blood test reports to come back. This process, in turn, is making it hard for the doctors to assess the current condition of the patient along with the progression of the illness. CT scans are generally used by the medical staff for assessment of a condition suffered by the patient, but the process is requiring multiple days to get an appointment due to the rise in the active cases of COVID-19 in India.
According to the doctors, the delay could cause massive aggravation in the medical situation of the patient. The RT-PCR tests also require several days before the doctors can get the result. There have been numerous patients that are in a critical situation but are unable to find a bed in a medical facility as they are unable to get a positive report of test for COVID-19 in India.
For individuals whose admissions are being refused in hospitals are hiring nurses of medical staff to get treatment at home, which is also coming with a hefty price tag since the situation of COVID-19 in India has aggravated massively.
Some of the hospitals are saying that they don’t have free beds to accommodate patients, while others are not taking new patients due to the uncertainty of getting oxygen supply.
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