As Covid-19 cases in Mumbai hover at the level of around 9,000 to 10,000 per day, the Maharashtra government and BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has put in action a massive plan to set up three Jumbo Field Hospitals and requisition several five-star and four-star hotels in this financial capital of India.
Shortage of beds of all kinds – normal, oxygen, ICU and ventilator – is a major issue that Mumbai is witnessing for over a fortnight’s time after the second wave hit the city.
On Monday, mayor Kishori Pednekar and municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal revealed the augmentation plans as the possibility of a total lockdown looms.
“We have a massive plan in action and we are addressing multiple issues,” said Pednekar, pointing out that nodal officers are being posted in Ward War Rooms and Jumbo Field Hospitals on a shift basis.
“The government has decided to build 3 more Jumbo Field Hospitals in next 5-6 weeks at 3 different locations in Mumbai each with a capacity of 2,000 beds with 200 ICU beds and 70% oxygenated beds,” Chahal said.
Certain 5-star and 4-star hotels shall be requisitioned immediately to create CCC2 asymptomatic positive patients to be dovetailed and run by professionals from major private hospitals to make a large number of beds available to new needy patients by shifting substantially recovered patients quickly to these CCC2 facilities to be managed by professional doctors.
“The BMC has added 325 additional ICU beds in various hospitals in Mumbai and the number of ICU beds has gone up to 2,466 now whereas the total number of Covid beds on online bed allotment dashboard has gone to 19,151 comprising of 141 hospitals out of which presently 3,777 DCHC/DCH beds are vacant,” he said.
The BMC will operationalise 1,100 additional DCHC/DCH Covid beds including 125 ICUs in the next seven days.
All labs have been instructed to ensure a turn around time of 24 hours without fail. “The labs have been instructed to give priority to swabs of symptomatic patients while processing the Covid-19 test collected under home collection of swabs,” he said.