Lahore rapidly running out of ventilators at major teaching hospitals

LAHORE: Teaching hospitals in Punjab have reported an influx of critical coronavirus patients in the past few days filling up space in the facilities at a rapid pace, ARY News reported on Friday.

According to details, four of the biggest teaching hospitals in the province have no beds with ventilators available as the space has already been occupied by patients.

Jinnah Hospital, Kot Khwaja Saeed Hospital, Services Hospital and Lahore General Hospital have reported reaching maximum capacity.

Six major hospitals in the province have not made their Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and High Dependency Units (HDUs) available for patients suffering from coronavirus.

It was revealed that the six hospitals including Punjab Institute of Cardiology, Lady Atchison, Wellington Hospital, Mian Munshi Hospital, Saeed Mitha Hospital and Social Security Hospital are yet to use their ventilators, ICUs and HDUs for coronavirus patients.

Patients have to deal with major difficulties due to non-availability of beds, ICUs, HDUs and ventilators in government hospitals in Punjab.

Secretary Health Punjab earlier in the day shared coronavirus related statistics for teaching hospitals in the province, he said that 46 hospitals have successfully treated and sent back 4884 coronavirus patients since the virus first struck.

The secretary told that teaching hospitals in the province have 6305 beds in total while 4168 of them remain vacant for coronavirus patients till this day.

1687 beds remain in teaching hospitals of Lahore out of a 2333 total beds, while 3329 beds remain out of a total 4586 in government teaching hospitals of Punjab.

Secretary Nabeel Ahmed Awan also claimed that 1382 coronavirus isolation wards also remain empty out of a total 1631.

He added that 628 HDUs out of 1175 still were up for the taking in government teaching hospitals, out of the 628 vacant HDUs, 243 are in Lahore.

It was also claimed that almost half of the total ventilators at the healthcare facilities were currently in use while 211 of 433 still remain unused, out of the 211 unused ventilators 62 are in Lahore.