Coronavirus patients seeking admission had to be sent back from the gate of Mugda General Hospital yesterday as the public hospital in the capital was bursting at the seams.

"Currently, 254 beds are full. We have no beds left for male patients, and only a few beds for female patients are available. I have to keep 39 beds in hand for patients requiring dialysis and postoperative care," said Dr Shah Golam Tuhin, principal of Mugda Medical College.

The hospital has 300 beds dedicated for Covid-19 patients. A photojournalist of The Daily Star, who was stationed there for five hours from 10:00am, saw many desperately trying to get a bed, but in vain.

Photo: Anisur Rahman

Referred by doctors at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Saburunnessa, a 85-year-old woman who recently tested coronavirus positive, was taken to the hospital around 9:00am by her two grandsons. Unable to secure a seat inside, she lay on a metal trolley near the hospital's gate until 3:00pm. 

Her grandson said, "Doctors here told us they have no capacity anymore to take elderly patients like her, and so we are going to Railway General Hospital to see if they are willing to take her."

The two then took Saburunnessa inside a CNG-run auto-rickshaw and headed towards the hospital in Kamalapur.

Md Delwar Hossain, 35, came all the way from Narayanganj in an ambulance around 10:00am. After around three hours, he too boarded a CNG-run auto-rickshaw and then headed towards home, unable to find a bed.

As he waited on the ground for a bed, he was not wearing gloves, and was only protected by a flimsy surgical mask.

He said he too was referred to the hospital by doctors at DMCH where he had gone earlier.

Photo: Anisur Rahman

"I sat on the ground the whole day. I have not been allowed into the hospital because I am coronavirus positive. I am going back to Narayanganj. I will stay home and try to recover. If I die, I will die at home," he told The Daily Star over phone later in the day.

Asked, Meerjady Sabrina Flora, director of Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), told this correspondent, "We do not know how many patients who are coronavirus positive are dying at home. That is an important statistic we do not have."

The guards standing in front of the hospital's emergency gates said in the last two days between 60 and 85 coronavirus positive patients showed up, presented their IEDCR test results and sought beds. But they all had to leave.

"We need to open other hospitals quickly [for coronavirus patients]. There are more patients than empty beds," said Dr Shah.

A similar fate was met by a young couple and their baby from Wari. None of them wore gloves, or any other protective gear, save for surgical masks.

"I tested positive for coronavirus, but I cannot be home quarantined, so I came to the hospital to seek a bed. At the same time, I wanted to get my wife and baby tested. But they are saying that there is no vacancy so we are going back home," he said.