As Sushil Kumar Srivastava’s breathing worsened, his family wrapped the 70-year-old man in a car and drove him to a hospital in the state capital of northern India. Uttar Pradesh, where he tested positive for coronavirus.
After the private hospital removed the retired government official because he had no empty bed, his son Ashish brought two oxygen cylinders and drove his father on a hunt for a hospital that could admit him.
“All hospitals requested a referral letter from the chief medical officer’s office (CMO),” Ashish said, referring to the city’s top health official, with about 3.5 million people.
In the office, Ashish said no one was helping him. “The police dodged me,” he said, as he tried to get to know the CMO.
Three days later, Ashish said someone in the government called him offering a bed for his father, a day after Srivastava had died at a private clinic.
The family’s ordeal reflects the worsening of the COVID-19 crisis in Uttar Pradesh, where people are fighting bureaucracy along with disease.
To get a COVID-19 bed in Lucknow, families say they need to show the result of an RT-PCR test, which is already missing.
Patients are then required to register at the CMO office, which then forwards the application to the Integrated Command Control Center for COVID management which makes the final bed allocation, va say a government official.
A state government spokesman told Reuters on Wednesday that authorities planned to end the CMO referral system this week and instead appoint officials from each COVID-19 hospital to assess whether a patient should be hospitalized. .
The heavy process has been the subject of criticism, including from the State Human Rights Commission which has called on the government to waive the referral rule.
“There are expert doctors in hospitals who can decide whether or not to admit the patient,” the commission said on Tuesday. “This reference letter system is not required.”
Having become the country currently hardest hit by the pandemic, India has recorded more than 200,000 daily COVID-19 cases over the past seven days, marking the strongest increase in the world this month, and yet there is no sign that the second wave of infections will reach its peak soon.
In Uttar Pradesh, where 200 million people live, infections increase by more than 22,000 cases a day, making it seriously difficult for their crunchy healthcare system.
The state government has said it is converting several hospitals into exclusively COVID facilities and adding more beds. He did not answer Reuters questions.
REQUEST FOR HELP
At the Lucknow CMO office, next to two large hospitals, dozens of people line up daily, soliciting, begging, and sometimes crying over a referral letter needed for hospital admissions.
This week, local TV news channels aired footage of a young man lying on the road to block the OCM car in his desperation to get a letter for a sick relative.
Patients should show an RT-PCR test that confirms the infection before receiving a referral letter.
But these tests are increasingly difficult to access for most patients, with long queues outside hospitals and clinics overloaded due to rising infections.
“Doing an RT-PCR at UP is almost impossible,” said journalist Shreya Jai, whose relatives had to wait a week for a rapid antigen test.
Many Lucknow labs work with less than half of their staff, the rest sick with the virus, said a lab worker, who asked not to be named.
The state government has said about 230 private, state-run laboratories were being used for coronavirus testing.
On Monday, the state government headed by Yogi Adityanath, which is currently on pause with COVID-19, was criticized for handling the crisis by a regional court.
“It’s a shame that even though the government knew about the magnitude of the second wave, it never planned things in advance,” the state’s Allhabad High Court said.
In Srivastava’s house, in a middle-class neighborhood in central Lucknow, there is anger and sadness after the head of the family’s cremation.
“I blame the officers sitting in the air-conditioned rooms for my father’s death,” said Ashish, 39, who is currently positive on COVID-19.
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