The Crisis That's Coming

Soon we will run out of skilled personnel to treat Covid. Here’s how to tackle this

- Devi Shetty

“Patients are dying in ICU because there are no nurses and doctors” is going to be the headline news after we address the oxygen shortage. Based on data from the first Covid wave, positivity rate should remain at 25-30% for the next 3-4 months. Every day over 3 lakh people are testing positive. Statistically, for every positive patient, there will be at least five more patients who are positive but not tested.

That means at least 15 lakh people are getting infected every day. Assuming that 5% of them may need ICU care, we will be adding about 75,000 ICU patients every day, who need to stay in the ICU for about ten days. Unfortunately, we only have 75,000-95,000 ICU beds, which were full even before the pandemic reached the peak. Today, our own intensivists aren’t sure whether they will get a bed in the same ICU where they’re working if they get infected.

Unlike the first wave, ICUs today are getting filled with younger patients. So most of the patients who die are going to be young breadwinners of the family, with devastating social implications.

We need to add 5 lakh new ICU beds in a few days to prevent this calamity. Any bed with central oxygen in a government or private hospital can be converted to an ICU bed with a few accessories, which can be procured easily.