While Sushil Kumar exacerbated Srivastava’s shortness of breath, his family bundled the 70-year-old into a car and drove to a hospital in the capital of the northern Uttar Pradesh country in India, where he tested positive for the coronavirus.
After the private hospital turned away the retired government official because he had no beds, his son Ashish brought two oxygen cylinders with him and his father went on a hunt for a hospital that could admit him.
“All the hospitals requested a referral letter from the Office of the Chief Medical Officer (CMO),” Ashish said, referring to the city’s top healthcare officer with about 3.5 million people.
At the office, Ashish said no one helped him. “The police chased me away,” he said when he tried to meet with the CMO.
Three days later, Ashish said someone from the government called him to offer a bed for his father – a day after Srivastava died in a private clinic.
The ordeal of the family reflects the worsening COVID-19 crisis in Uttar Pradesh, where people are struggling with the disease with bureaucracy.
To get a COVID-19 bed in Lucknow, families say they have to show the result of an RT-PCR test, which already has a deficiency.
Next, patients must register at the CMO office, which then forwards the request to the Integrated Command Control Center for COVID management which makes the final bed allocation, a government official said.
A state government spokesman told Reuters on Wednesday that authorities plan to end the CMO referral system this week and instead appoint officials at each COVID-19 hospital to determine whether a patient should be admitted.
The cumbersome process has come under criticism, including by the State Human Rights Commission asking the government to halt the referral rule.
“There are expert doctors in hospitals who can decide whether the patient should be admitted or not,” the commission said Tuesday. “This referral letter system is not necessary.”
After becoming the country currently hit hardest by the pandemic, India has recorded more than 200,000 new COVID-19 cases daily over the past seven days, which was the world’s strongest rise this month, and there are still no sign that the second wave of infections is about to peak.
In Uttar Pradesh, where 200 million people live, infections are increasing daily by more than 22,000 cases, severely hampering the cracked healthcare system.
The state government has said it is converting several hospitals into COVID facilities and adding more beds. It did not respond to questions from Reuters.
ASK FOR HELP
At Lucknow’s CMO office, adjacent to two large hospitals, there are dozens of people daily who ask, beg and sometimes cry for a referral letter needed for hospital admissions.
Local TV news channels aired footage this week of a young man lying on the road blocking the CMO’s car in his desperation to get a letter for a sick family member.
Patients should show an RT-PCR test that confirms infection before receiving a referral letter.
But most patients have increasingly difficult access to these tests, with long queues outside hospitals and clinics being too heavy due to the increase in infections.
“Doing an RT-PCR in UP is almost impossible,” said journalist Shreya Jai, whose family members had to wait a week to get a quick antigen test.
Many Lucknow laboratories work with less than half of their staff, and the others are sick with the virus, a laboratory worker asked not to be named.
The state government said nearly 230 private and state-run coronavirus testing laboratories are being used.
On Monday, the state government led by Yogi Adityanath, who himself is not currently with COVID-19, was summoned by a regional court to deal with the crisis.
“It is unfortunate that, although the government knew of the extent of the second wave, it never planned it in advance,” the Supreme Court in Allahabad said.
In the Srivastava household, in a middle-class neighborhood in the center of Lucknow, there is anger and sadness after the cremation of the family head.
“I blame the officers sitting in air-conditioned rooms for my father’s death,” said Ashish, 39, who is himself COVID-19 positive.
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