Mumbai to battle rising Covid-19 cases with jumbo hospitals, care centres in 5-star hotels

Mumbai reported 9986 cases of the coronavirus disease and 79 related fatalities on Sunday, which took its caseload to 520,498 and death toll to 12,023.

Authorities in Mumbai will set up three jumbo field hospitals in the next five-six weeks and convert four-star and five-star hotels as Covid Care Centres to handle the massive spike in the cases of the coronavirus disease, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said on Monday. The city’s city civic body chief Iqbal Singh Chahal said these medical facilities will be set up at three different locations in the city and will have a capacity of 2,000 beds, including 200 ICU beds and 70 per cent oxygen beds, according to news agency PTI.

Iqbal Singh Chahal, the BMC commissioner, said the steps have been taken to make more beds available for the needy patients of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). (ANI Photo)

The BMC commissioner said the steps have been taken to make more beds available for the needy patients by shifting those who have recovered substantially to the Covid Care Centre 2 or CCC2 facilities, which will be managed by doctors. Chahal said authorities have also requested some four-star and four-star hotels to create CCC2 facilities, which will be "dovetailed and run by professionals from major private hospitals”, according to PTI.

Chahal said that the civic body has also decided to appoint nodal officers for an accurate and more proactive functioning of the 24 ward war rooms and the jumbo field hospitals. "The nodal officers shall function in two shifts—from 3pm to 11pm and 11pm to 7am—both at the ward war rooms and jumbo field hospitals," he was quoted as saying PTI.

According to BMC, these nodal officers will be constantly in touch with each other to facilitate allotment of beds to patients requiring beds and calling up Ward War Rooms, especially between 1pm and 7am.

Chahal also said that all laboratories conducting tests to detect Covid-19 have been instructed to prioritise swabs of symptomatic patients collected from homes and follow the new time schedules given to them. He said the number of ICU beds in the city has been increased to 2466, with 325 new beds added in various hospitals.

BMC’s online bed allotment dashboard shows there are 19,151 beds in 141 hospitals in the city. Chahal said out of the 19,151 beds, 3777 in dedicated Covid-19 hospitals are currently vacant. The BMC will operationalise 1100 additional beds, including 125 ICU beds, in these medical facilities in the next seven days, he said.

Mumbai reported 9986 cases of the coronavirus disease and 79 related fatalities on Sunday, which took its caseload to 520,498 and death toll to 12,023. According to the Union ministry of health and family welfare, Mumbai is among the 10 districts along with Pune, Thane, Nagpur, Bengaluru Urban, Nashik, Delhi, Raipur, Durg and Aurangabad which account for 45.65 per cent of the total active cases in the country.

(With agency inputs)