After outbreak at IHBAS, weeks-long dash to shift 9 psychiatric COVID-19 patients

New Delhi: "For the last two weeks, I have been working over 12-hour shifts and every day all I do is pick up a Covid-19 patient from our hospital in an ambulance and go around the city looking for a hospital bed," 25-year-old Dr Anup Kumar says, sitting on the curb outside the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital.

The Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, where Dr Kumar started working on April 1, has had to make arrangements to shift as many as nine psychiatric Covid-19 positive patients to other hospitals since an outbreak at the non-Covid facility in Dilshad Garden earlier this month, which has put patients and doctors in a tough spot.

All Kumar, a junior resident himself, and one other junior doctor have been doing since the outbreak is to find hospital beds for the Covid patients who needed to be moved out.

On Saturday, as Dr Kumar stopped for a smoke break after being told by authorities at LNJP that a bed will not be available for his patient, he said, "Sometime around April 4, we found the first positive case and since then we've tested aggressively." He added that just in the psychiatry department, nine serious patients had tested positive for the virus. Moreover, two of his colleagues, also junior doctors working in the department, had tested positive.

As of Monday, evening, one of these patients was yet to find a hospital bed in a Covid facility. The woman, in her 60s, has been isolated in a room at IHBAS itself as Kumar's colleague, Dr Nidhi looks for a hospital bed.

Of the other patients, while some got beds at GTB and other hospitals eventually, others were sent to home isolation with care.

"Before we came here (LNJP), we had first taken this patient to RML Hospital, which also said it did not have a bed for our patient. She is 65 plus and has a serious psychiatric condition and is now Covid-19 positive," Kumar said, pointing to the ambulance on the road that was carrying the patient.

Explaining why it was important that these patients be admitted to hospitals despite not having serious Covid-19 symptoms, he said that their psychiatric condition was serious and they needed round-the-clock medical care for that as well. "Some of them could get violent, some could hurt themselves or others around them and all of them are on heavy and complicated dosages of psychiatric drugs. These patients need the care," he said.

However, some of these patients were also involved in court proceedings or an accused in a police case, as a result of which they need to be monitored as well.

According to the 25-year-old doctor, given the Covid-19 outbreak in the hospital, just three junior doctors are currently working in the psychiatry department. When asked whether he had been vaccinated, Kumar said, "No, the outbreak started as soon as I started working here after finishing medical school in Bihar's JLNMCH and if now, I take vaccine, I will have to take a few days off to deal with the symptoms and there is not enough staff at IHBAS so I can't afford that right now."

On Monday evening, Kumar said he had taken a break as he was feeling unwell and is resting up so that he can pull a 24-hour shift starting Tuesday morning.

Multiple attempts to reach the Director of IHBAS over the phone were left unanswered.