India reported its index case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in January 2020 and since then there has been an alarming rise in cases. In response to the worsening pandemic and the challenge presented by COVID-19 for hospitals in the public sector, the Government of India asked the country’s private hospitals to reserve a percentage of their beds for COVID-19 patients.

This article describes how nursing services at the Christian Medical College, Vellore – an unaided, not-for-profit quaternary care teaching hospital in Tamil Nadu, India – addressed various challenges to ensure a sustained, high-quality nursing care response to increased patient load. The main challenges included changing COVID-19 policies, ensuring the hospital was prepared to care for COVID-19 patients, and ensuring the availability of nurses.

The article demonstrates how proactive planning, empowered involvement of nursing leaders and collaborative efforts resulted in deployment and training of 1,400 nurses, and ensured coordinated care for more than 10,000 patients with COVID-19.