Doctors Down: Hospitals face staff shortage with frontline workers catching COVID-19

Adding to the already grim situation in India's second Covid wave is the increasing number of healthcare professionals who are catching the infection. The medical fraternity has sounded an alarm -healthcare facilities are running on full capacity with fewer staff members.Hospital administrations have warned that the peak of second wave will hit India harder if this continues. The only positive is that since healthcare workers are mostly fully vaccinated, post-infection symptoms are mild to moderate.

Most hospitals have scaled up capacity by 10-35% to accommodate the increasing number of Covid patients and are recruiting more healthcare staff. But doctors, nursing staff and other frontline workers are increasingly staying away from work for 14-21 days after contracting the virus.

"On an average we are reporting 8-10 positive cases per day in our healthcare staff and right now 5% of our staff is out of service. We expect this number to only increase. Since all healthcare workers were inoculated the symptoms are mild to moderate mostly, but still they cannot attend to patients and are out of service for 14-21 days," said Dr Aashish Chaudhary, managing director, Aakash Healthcare.


Dr Shuchin Bajaj, founder and director of Ujala Cygnus Group of hospitals, told ET that senior doctors, consultants and nurses have fallen sick and across hospitals the patient load is up five times. "We are actually working at half our strength. So it is a tough time for us," he said.

Much bigger patient load
In the first wave, the hospitals had formulated a roster system which involved separating the staff in three groups so that the entire staff did not get infected together. Under this system, one group worked and two were on leave and then the second group took over.

This ensured that hospitals always had staff.

However, this time the patient load has been much bigger and it is an all-hands-on-deck situation. Dr Chaudhary said, "We have more infectivity in the second wave so the patient load in any hospital which was earlier about 190-200 is now 280-300. In ICU if the nursing staff-patient ratio was 1:1, it is now 1:4. In the ward if this was 1:5 now it is 1:10. So the entire staff has to work to keep pace with the patient load. We have not been able to make rosters in this wave."

Dr Bishnu Panigrahi, group head, medical strategy and operations, Fortis Healthcare, told ET, "In all our hospitals doctors are getting infected. In one of our hospitals the head of emergency got infected, her deputy is just returning after a Covid infection. We are looking at making the staff work in two batches but it is all hands on board situation with increasing cases."

Hospitals are trying to recruit additional manpower. However, in the public sector this would remain a problem area. Healthcare federations have recommended to the government that final year nursing and medical students be roped in for Covid duty.

Association of Healthcare Providers India director general Dr Girdhar Giani told ET that the association has recommended that the final year students be given extra credits if they are roped in for Covid-related service.