The hospital has already deferred routine surgeries to free up nurses and doctors to take care of the huge number of patients turning up.
It's just before noon and tempers are running high as patients try and jostle with each other to get the attention of doctors at a temporarily set up 'fever bay' at the Hindu Rao hospital in North Delhi. The humidity makes matters worse, with many having come from far off places and having to wait for their turn. A team of four doctors try to keep up with the growing number of patients, performing a quick examination, noting down their names and symptoms before passing them on further down the line to another set of lab technicians taking blood samples.
With 14 deaths due to dengue so far, anyone with symptoms ranging from high fever to body ache and shivering have been lining up at the hospital to get screened for the disease.
"Not every fever is dengue, but people are panicking," says Dr VK Khurana, head of Hindu Rao hospital.
The hospital has already deferred routine surgeries to free up nurses and doctors to take care of the huge number of patients turning up. On Tuesday alone 600 people were examined by doctors in a temporarily set up fever clinic, however, only 10 case of dengue were confirmed. "Such is the fear of having dengue that patients who may not even have dengue are insisting on being admitted, some have even started self-medicating themselves," says one doctor examining patients in the clinic.
The hospital already has 422 patients and just 360 beds. The problem becomes acutely apparent as one enters ward number 16 located on the fourth floor of the hospital which houses suspected dengue patients.
On almost all beds there are at least two patients if not more lying side-by-side. Every five minutes or so as another patient is brought in, nurses hurriedly go about trying to find a bed where there are no more than one or two patients already, to try and accommodate another.
Santosh Kumar, whose son Vishal has just been brought with dengue symptoms, doesn't seem to notice or perhaps even care that there is already one patient in a bed along with Vishal.
He starts crying when we ask him how long Vishal's been unwell. "He's had fever for the past four days and doctors suspect dengue. My wife died last year and he is all that I have in the world."
Mr Kumar earns Rs 200 per day by ironing clothes but hasn't been at work for the past three days. While he's not sure where his next meal will come from his only concern is to make sure Vishal recovers now.