New Delhi: The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, temporarily stopped all routine patient admissions, routine procedures and non-essential surgeries Friday to prepare for a surge in hospitalisation as the country faces the third Covid wave.
In the last 24 hours, over 1 lakh new cases of Covid-19 were reported from across the country, of which 15,097 were from Delhi, according to bulletins issued by the central and Delhi governments.
In a circular issued Friday, D.K. Sharma, medical superintendent of AIIMS Delhi, stated that all specialty clinics should also be stopped for the time being.
The notice also stated that OPD services in AIIMS and all its centres will continue to function with restricted registrations limited to patients with prior appointments.
Specialty clinic follow-up patients will be registered within follow-up appointment slots only, the circular said.
“All routine in-patient admissions and routine procedures/non-essential surgeries will be temporarily stopped till further orders,” the circular said.
The trauma emergency department of AIIMs will be shifted to a different building within the premises Saturday, according to a separate circular issued Friday.
In April last year, when cases in India had seen an unprecedented surge amid the second Covid wave, the hospital had taken a similar decision to minimise transmission among patients and optimise the resources available to cater to the surge.
According to information available on the Delhi government’s Covid dashboard, as of Friday afternoon, a total of 1,423 out of 13,904 dedicated Covid beds were occupied in the national capital. The AIIMS Covid ward has 103 beds, of which 28 were vacant.
Of 12,794 oxygen beds in Delhi, 1,352 were occupied, while 233 ICU beds out of over 3,817 were occupied by Covid patients. Moreover, 90 Covid patients had occupied ICU beds with ventilators.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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