COVID-19 hospital crisis in India with patients ‘begging to leave’

As India struggles with its latest coronavirus crisis, one hospital is so bad its patients are begging to leave instead of begging for treatment.

Health officials visit the wards inside Sardar Patel COVID Care Centre. Picture: Twitter @MediaMudb

As India continues to struggle to contain its second wave, one makeshift hospital is so bad that patients are now “begging to leave”.

The crisis has spiked to a point where local media are calling the situation “grim”, with critical patients dropping dead in cardboard beds and on the side of the road as they wait for available space.

Sardar Patel COVID Care Centre and Hospital is a makeshift COVID-19 facility in Chhatarpur, on the outskirts of New Delhi. Its mission is to provide emergency care for the thousands struggling to breathe.

But 25-year-old Goldi Patel’s husband is not begging for oxygen there; he’s begging to leave.

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Patients who contracted the coronavirus rest while connected to oxygen supplies inside the emergency ward of a COVID-19 hospital in New Delhi. Picture: Rebecca Conway

Sadanand Patel, 30, is receiving such little treatment that he’s scared he will die in the very hospital that’s meant to save him.

He told CNN, “through laboured breathing” from his hospital bed: “I am very scared, if my health gets critical I don’t think they will be able to save me.”

The report said “he watched two men in beds nearby scream for medicine only to die within hours when their oxygen appeared to run out”.

But he’s not the only one. Desperate pleas scatter social media with the names of patients and desperate families pleading with Chief Minister of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal for more supplies.

One warned others the hospital had had no oxygen for the past 15 hours while 49-year-old Jashuwanta Bora’s oxygen was going down so fast his family pleaded for an ICU bed online.

Senior ITBP officials visiting the wards of 500 oxygen bedded Sardar Patel Covid Care Centre to meet the patients and to see on the ground arrangements. 400 patients are presently admitted at the centre@ITBP_official@AmitShah@MoHFW_INDIApic.twitter.com/kom7URLqjS

— Mubh Media (@MediaMubh) April 30, 2021

It’s not any better outside the centre, where two women were seen crying next to a 45-year-old man who was lying on the back seat of a car. “He was not moving or responding to their calls,” The Hindu reported. Death, it seems, is inescapable here.

“We have been waiting here for two hours. Now there is no pulse. They even refused to check him even after we said that there was no pulse” Megh Singh, 60, his relative said.

India — particularly its capital, Delhi — has been hard struck by variant strains of COVID-19 and the number of deaths continues to rise despite the city being placed in lockdown two weeks ago.

India’s total COVID-19 caseload neared 20 million and oxygen shortages exacerbated a devastating second wave on Monday.

On Sunday, Delhi recorded more than 400 COVID-related deaths in a single day for the second consecutive day.

On Saturday, the city had recorded its highest ever COVID death toll in 24 hours at 412 deaths.

Worse, experts say the death rate will continue to rise with just over 3400 deaths and 368,000 new cases yesterday.

There are now 92,290 active cases of COVID-19 in Delhi, and only 20,000 COVID beds in the city’s hospitals.

Its positivity rate has been exceedingly high for the last two weeks at more than 30 per cent, or one in three tests returning a positive result.

That rate has dropped slightly to 28.33 but it’s not enough; hospitals are still overwhelmed and supplies remain critically low due to the large numbers of cases. Patients are dying on the streets, out the front of hospitals, or begging to be moved. Some die in waiting rooms before they even get to see a doctor.

Patients lying on cardboard

Only the lucky few are admitted into India’s struggling hospital system but once there, some wish they were out. Everywhere you turn, patients are breathing heavily, gasping for air, quivering.

The Sardar Patel COVID Care Centre reopened to the New Delhi community in late April boasting urgent facilities free of cost. Walk-in admissions of needy patients are accepted but generally a reference is needed. The site was closed in February when officials thought India had successfully avoided another surge.

But just two days after its April 26 opening, community members began to report serious cracks after a “huge influx” of patients. Witnesses say more than 200 patients were waiting outside the centre at 11am as chaos ensued due to lack of beds in the giant warehouse facility.

CNN said the centre even resorted to using cardboard beds and patients say they are left to fend for themselves without doctors, nurses or oxygen.

The Indian Express described the reaction as “disappointment” and “despair”.

“The condition is so bad that the patient attendants declared it a “suicide centre”, New Delhi resident Mukesh Khare said. “No water, no food, no care.”

Another called it a “death trap” and said that “patients are crying to get water and food”.

Chaos unfolded at Delhi's Sardar Patel Covid Care Centre due to lack of beds and information pic.twitter.com/giTDCGgwQR

— The Indian Express (@IndianExpress) April 28, 2021

Dead body lay for hours

Patient Mr Patel said that by his fifth day at the hospital, he had watched at least five people around him die. In one case, a deceased patient’s body was left on a bed next to him “for hours” before it was removed.

“You will die lying on your bed because there’s no one to call the doctor,” he said.

In another case, one sick patient who was refused entry died outside the hospital squashed in a small car on the side of the road as she ran out of breath.

“They killed my mother. I kept crying and yelling for help but none came,” Kiran Vyas’s devastated son told media.

Officials are promising delivery of extra supplies and say more beds are on their way, but it is already too late for some.

Cases have soared by around eight million since the end of March, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi under growing pressure to take decisive action to reverse the surge.

“Oxygen is a basic requirement of a hospital and a consistent supply has not been assured. We are constantly firefighting,” the head of the Madhukar Rainbow Children’s Hospital Dr Dinesh told the Indian Express daily.

India recorded more than 360,000 coronavirus cases in a day for the 12th day in a row as the total number of those infected according to Health Ministry data neared 20 million. Picture: Rebecca Conway