A doctor has moved a PIL in the High court seeking quashing of Delhi government's order for reserving 20 percent beds in private hospitals and nursing homes in the national capital having a bed capacity of 50 or more for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The public interest litigation filed by Dr Kaushal Kant Mishra, an orthopaedic surgeon, said that the order is arbitrary and in violation of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution as it will lead to the hospitals becoming further spreaders of infection.

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Dr Mishra approached the Delhi High Court through his advocate stating most of the 117 hospitals/nursing homes are designed as a single building and not in separate blocks, where COVID-19 patients cannot be effectively segregated from other patients. It also suggested alternative measures that can be taken to enable effective treatment of coronavirus patients. It said that another option would be to take over a few hospitals in each district fully and use them exclusively for treating COVID-19 patients.

The PIL said that each hospital can also dedicate one ambulance with emergency care in case any COVID patient needing hospitalisation arrives. This ambulance can be used to transport the patient to the COVID hospital in the district. The plea, which is likely to come up for hearing on June 12, also said that the hospitals are mostly not designed in terms of airconditioning, other supplies like pharma, engineering services, oxygen supply, etc to achieve segregation. It said that the order overlooks the lack of segregation and violates the instructions issued by the Central government through its letter dated March 28, 2020, which stressed the importance of proper segregation to avoid hospitals becoming centres for COVID-19 spread.

"Challenges start from common entry and exit point, common lobby, common lifts, common washrooms, etc, which are used by all patients whether COVID-19 or not. This definitely increases the risks of infection, despite the facility taking all possible care of reducing intermingling," the plea said. "Many of the hospitals are providing super specialised treatment in different fields where patients are anyway vulnerable and have low immunity. Further, there are patients, who require dialysis and have low immunity and are at severe risk if COVID and non-COVID patients are treated in the same hospitals," the plea said.

"A more effective solution would be to create new centres dedicated to the treatment of COVID-19 patients, such as hotels, banquet halls, stadiums, etc which will result in the treatment of COVID-19 patients in a segregated environment and avoid the risk of infection to non-COVID patients," it added. It said that states like Kerala have already taken over huge convention centres for the treatment of COVID patients and Mumbai has taken over stadium and planetarium to set up 1,000 bed ICU at Bandra Kural Complex.