As Covid spikes, Hyderabad hospitals fly in nurses from Kerala

HYDERABAD : Over the past fortnight, two private hospitals from Hyderabad flew in about 50 nurses from Thiruvananthapuram in charter flights to meet a sudden surge in trained staff.
With Telangana registering a little less than 1,000 Covid-19 cases daily and most private hospitals finding themselves packed with patients, many of them are even ready to pay substantially higher salaries to attract nurses.

“In fact, other hospitals in town are frequently approaching us seeking nurses on a temporary basis,” said an official from a corporate hospital in the city. Many others are offering three times the wages.
“I am getting 10-15 calls a day from corporate hospitals, asking for nurses. They are offering Rs 45,000 to Rs 50,000 a month, which is almost three times the pay previously offered,” said Laxman Rudavath, general secretary, Nursing Officers Association of Telangana.
The problem, hospital managements say, is the fact that staff requirement for handling Covid-19 patients is higher than regular patients. “For instance, if a regular patient requires one nurse every day, for Covid-19 patients the requirement is three times. The fact that many nurses and doctors shy away from Covid-19 duties means the availability of staff is lower than required,” said the manager of a super-specialty hospital chain.
Doctors also attribute the crunch to lack of qualified nurses to handle ICU duties and an increasing number of nurses testing positive to the virus. The latter, they say, has resulted in multiple batches of nurses going into 14-day quarantine.
“This has further reduced the staff strength. In fact, nurses are taking unilateral decision to go on quarantine once any of their colleagues test positive,” said another official from a corporate hospital in the city.
The crisis, officials added, has limited intake capacity of private hospitals treating Covid-19 patients. “We went to seven different hospitals to get a single bed during an emergency. Forget the government approved rates, beds are not even available at five times the cost,” said a patient’s attendant.