The Sardar Patel Covid Care Centre (SPCCC) which opened on Monday after a much hullabaloo, turned out a disappointment since it only allowed 123 people despite having a 500-bed capacity, while a long queue of patients waited outside for hours to get admitted there.
The patients, who turned in for admission there queued in cars and ambulances outside the centre.
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A 55-year-old patient inside an ambulance parked near the centre groaned as he felt utter discomfort in breathing. His daughter sobbed looking at him as he was denied admission. She complained that no one from the centre is responding to the calls she made.
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“We have been calling here since the morning as we could not avail a bed anywhere. Now when I reached here, I was told to get a reference. How will do it when no one would attend my calls,” the daughter said.
Like the woman, many other patients complained of the officers who were assigned to assist the patients in getting admission at the centre. Several helpline numbers are also issued to reach the officers, however, to no avail.
As per the protocol, District Surveillance Officers (DSOs) have been tasked to approve and refer the patients to the Covid care centre.
However, the patients complained that they did not respond to calls. This reporter also made several attempts to reach out to the DSOs, but neither the officers responded, nor the call got through the helpline number.
The Ministry of Home Affairs had last week designated ITBP, the border police force as the nodal agency for operations of the 500 oxygenated beds-Covid facility in Chattarpur.
The SPCCC, which was set up last year during the first Covid-19 wave was shut down after the cases were brought under control.
The South-Delhi based facility was restarted after the national capital registered a sharp rise in coronavirus cases, leading to an acute shortage of hospital beds and oxygen in the city.
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