Mumbai civic body’s ward war rooms for Covid-19 to operate at night too

Patients who call the ward war rooms between 11pm and 7am will predominantly be allotted beds at jumbo Covid facilities. Municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal made an announcement to this effect on Monday morning.

To ensure that needy Covid-19 patients promptly get hospital beds, especially during night between 11pm and 7am, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has allotted nodal officers at 24 ward war rooms in Mumbai. The officers will work in two shifts — 3pm to 11pm and 11pm to 7am — to ensure patients get beds round the clock.

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However, the patients who call the ward war room between 11pm and 7 am, will be allotted beds predominantly at jumbo Covid facilities only. Nodal officers at ward war rooms are expected to fast-track bed allotment at night, and to ensure this, they will stay in touch with the seven jumbo facilities at all times. Once the beds are allotted to the patients, they will have to reach the facility and will be allotted a bed after assessing the medical condition and requirement of the patient.

Municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal made an announcement to this effect on Monday morning.

In addition, those who call the ward war rooms at night but have not received their test report or have not been tested, will be entitled to beds in such facilities under the suspected category and a test will be conducted to ascertain if they have contracted the disease.

The city on Monday reported 6,893 new Covid-19 cases and 43 deaths, taking case count to 425,091 and toll to 12,066. Active cases in Mumbai have gone up to 89,125 while case fatality rate is 2.8%. On Sunday, Mumbai conducted 39,398 Covid tests, pushing the total number of tests conducted in the city so far to 4,650,187.

Mumbai will also get three more Jumbo Covid hospitals with around 2,000 Covid-19 beds including 200 intensive care unit (ICU) beds within the next six weeks, BMC announced on Monday. Of these beds, around 1,400 will be oxygen beds.

With the steady rise in Covid-19 cases, the civic body has decided to requisition some four-star and five-star hotels to create Covid quarantine facilities (CCC2) for positive patients, to be run by professionals from major private hospitals. With this, BMC plans to make large number of beds available to needy patients by shifting substantially recovered patients to these CCC2 facilities.

BMC will also add 1,100 additional hospital beds including 125 ICU beds within the next week.

As of Monday afternoon, Mumbai has 19,329 hospital beds for Covid-19 patients of which 3,878 are vacant. Of the 2,542 ICU beds, 60 are vacant, 20 of the 1,330 ventilator beds, and 1,394 of 9,934 oxygen beds are vacant.

All laboratories have been instructed to ensure that Covid-19 test results are concluded within 24 hours without fail. The labs have also been instructed to give priority to swabs of symptomatic patients. In addition, labs have been asked to submit reports of patients who tested positive by 6am every morning, in a bid to ensure that such patients get beds by 8am the same day and within 24 hours of their swab collection. Presently, positive reports of patients who get tested in the first half of the day are submitted to BMC by midnight the same day.