Anantnag: The occupancy of hospital beds designated for Covid-19 patients has witnessed a considerable decline in Srinagar and elsewhere in Kashmir division as the recovery rate has gone up while the number of new cases has come down.
As on June 6, 1,078 beds out of the total 2,853 in the 24 Covid hospitals of Kashmir division were occupied by Covid patients. “This means an occupancy of 37.7 percent,” a senior official from the administration, privy to the records, told Kashmir Reader.
If compared with the data from the thick of the second wave, this number has decreased considerably. On May 15, 40.7 percent of beds in these hospitals were occupied by Covid patients.
“And if we go back a little, the occupancy was around 50 percent on May 1,” the official said, adding that the numbers from Srinagar hospitals are particularly encouraging because these hospitals have been majorly contributing in the fight against the pandemic.
SMHS hospital, SKIMS, CD Hospital, JLNM hospital, SKIMS Bemina and Kashmir Nursing Home are the hospitals in Srinagar where majority of the Covid patients in Kashmir were being treated.
These six hospitals had 967 beds allocated to Covid treatment on May 1, of which 718 (at around 74 percent) remained occupied on the same date. “By May 15, the number of beds increased to 1,171 but the number of patients admitted to these hospitals also increased, with 912 patients more admitted on the same day. That means around 75 percent of the beds remained occupied,” the official said.
The heartening thing now is that the occupancy in these major hospitals has gone down by around 25 percent between May 15 and June 6. As on June 6, only 594 of the 1,181 available beds were occupied by Covid patients.
Besides, similar numbers are being reported from other hospitals in the valley as well. The reason, doctors say, is a higher recovery rate and a considerable decrease in the number of new cases.
“The recovery rate, if we took a look at the records, was only around 77 percent on May 15. Today the recovery rate is touching 90 percent, 89.6 percent to be precise,” a doctor working at a Srinagar hospital told Kashmir Reader.
He said that the recovery rate was expected to go further up with decreasing numbers of fresh cases in coming days.
“Let us have our fingers crossed and hope that the situation gets better each passing day,” the doctor from Srinagar said.
He however added that precautions still had to be taken and the guard not let down. Apart from getting vaccinated, the doctor said, we should make sure we wear face masks and maintain social distancing.

Suhail A Shah