All Navi Mumbai Covid centres except one in Vashi shut

All Covid centres except the one at CIDCO Exhibition Centre, Vashi, are shut in Navi Mumbai; even as the centres have been shut, the beds and other equipment are still at the centres

With very few Covid cases found daily, the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation has wound up all the Covid centres except for one at CIDCO Exhibition Centre.

All the Navi Mumbai Covid centres except the one in Vashi have been shut with the drop in daily cases in the city. (BACHCHAN KUMAR/HT PHOTO)

There are a total of 13 Covid centres of NMMC that gradually kept reducing over a period of time. During the third wave, five major centres were functional. With no admissions at all, NMMC commissioner, Abhijit Bangar, on Thursday decided to wind up the centres and reduce the staff that were hired on contractual basis during the pandemic.

Only the CIDCO Exhibition Centre No. 2 at Vashi with 45 beds is kept operational, It has just two admissions as of Saturday.

“In Navi Mumbai, including the private hospitals, only four patients are admitted who require oxygen and there are none at the ICU,” medical health officer, Dr Pramod Patil, said. “Even the OPD cases have gone down by 70% to 80%. And whoever comes is for lifestyle diseases and not Covid.”

During the pandemic, around 2,000 new staff were hired on contractual basis, of which 1,000 were reduced before the third wave and were planned to be hired if the need arose. Of these, 486 have been retained.

“The remaining staff will be used for vaccination work. Even for vaccination, we do not need so much staff. The staff would be divided for various work and as and when the need is not there, more would be reduced,” Dr Patil said.

Even as the centres have been shut, the beds and other equipment are still at the centres. The corporation has not decided as to what to do with those. As of now, security guards have been asked to guard the places to secure the equipment and beds inside the centres.

Currently, on an average, 13 positive cases are found as against 25 found till last week. The average testing done now is 7,634 while till last week it was 8,275. The positivity rate is 0.10% and the doubling rate is 10,177, up from 5,156 last week. In Navi Mumbai, till now, 11.49 lakh people are fully vaccinated including 55,438 children in the age group of 15-18 years. Meanwhile, 33,305 people have taken the booster dose.