KC General Hospital now has more ICU beds than Victoria

KC General Hospital in Malleswaram will have more ICU beds than the city’s largest Covid-19 designated hospital at the Victoria Hospital campus.

The hospital will soon have 100 ICU beds on top of its current capacity of six ICU beds and 100 non-emergency Covid beds.

Besides the 10 mobile container beds Deputy Chief Minister Ashwath Narayan promised that can accommodate 50 patients, work is on at a war-footing to fix oxygen pipelines at the Indian Population Project (IPP) building at the campus that will accommodate 50 more patients.

The problem comes as the hospital, already hamstrung with staff shortage, needs 10 anaesthetists, 10 physicians, 50 staff nurses, 50 group D workers, lab technicians, security guards, and data entry operators to manage the extended facility.

“Each mobile container ICU will have five beds,” said KC General Hospital’s medical superintendent Dr B R Venkateshaiah. “We needed to be orientated to enter and exit the containers and use the airlock. With work going at the IPP building on a war-footing, we should soon be able to treat 100 ICU patients.”

The chief said only 50% of the hospital’s manpower demands have been fulfilled. Once the remaining 50% staff are recruited, hiring for the new ICU units will begin, he added.

The Emergency and Trauma Care Centre on the Victoria Hospital campus, the city’s main Covid-19 designated hospital, has 36 ICU beds, besides 14 more at the hospital. Bowring and Lady Curzon, another major designated government hospital, has 20 ICU beds, while the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases has six.

Patient footfall at KC General Hospital increased following the designation of Victoria and Bowring and Lady Curzon as Covid-19 hospitals. Non-Covid patients began flooding the hospital’s outpatient department, causing the spread of coronavirus among its nurses, physicians, and OPD staff. They had all been later quarantined.

The hospital recently demanded to be converted into a Covid-only facility, but the health department is unable to oblige owing to the shortage of hospitals and beds for non-Covid patients.