Mumbai’s plans to tackle third wave of Covid-19

A week after chief minister Uddhav Thackeray struck a note of caution, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has come up with a plan to scale up infrastructure which will enable the city to tackle 2,500 moderate to severely symptomatic patients daily by setting up a 400-bed facility catering solely to children within a month, additional oxygen plants and oxygen refilling plants, and new Covid jumbo centres in anticipation of a possible third wave between July and September

A week after chief minister Uddhav Thackeray struck a note of caution, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has come up with a plan to scale up infrastructure which will enable the city to tackle 2,500 moderate to severely symptomatic patients daily by setting up a 400-bed facility catering solely to children within a month, additional oxygen plants and oxygen refilling plants, and new Covid jumbo centres in anticipation of a possible third wave between July and September.

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In all, 6,000 oxygenated beds will be added to the current capacity of 11,200 and 1500 ICU beds will be added to the city’s current 2,900 beds. The focus will be on children’s well-being, civic officials said.

The BMC will build a 400-bed Covid facility for children at the NESCO jumbo centre in Goregaon, which is expected to be ready within a month. It also plans to create crèches for children in Covid facilities to cater to families where both parents are infected and admitted. Apart from that, the BMC is planning to build four oxygen plants as well as stock up on medicines like Remdesivir, Tocilizumab injections, officials added. However, the officials did not give any timeline for when the oxygen plants or the crèches would be available, as yet.

“We have decided to have at least 400- bed pediatric Covid-19 ward for children. We will also have a crèche where children will be taken care of in case both their parents are infected due to Covid-19. We are also considering having separate Covid wards for senior citizens. We want to be in a position to handle around 2,500 symptomatic patients who need hospitalisation daily, up from the 1,500 such patients [who needed hospitalization in] the second wave,” Sanjeev Jaiswal, additional municipal commissioner of BMC, said.

“There may or may not be a third wave, but we need to prepare for it. Also, with mutations we also need to change our focus. In the first wave it was the elderly [who were most affected], [in the] second wave, [it was the] above 30-age group, and [in the] third wave it may be children [who could be affected]. Hence, we need to strategise accordingly,” Dr Shashank Joshi, member of Maharashtra Covid-19 task force said.

The CM and Mumbai suburban guardian minister Aaditya Thackeray have held meetings with civic officials for preparations for a third wave since Saturday.

As part of the BMC’s scale up, 1,500 beds were added to the NESCO centre, of which 1,000 beds are oxygenated. The NESCO jumbo centre, which was set up last year, will now have 3,700 beds. The city currently has six jumbo centres with 8,000 beds. Four more jumbo centres are expected to come up in next two months at Kanjurmarg, Malad, Sion and Mahalaxmi which will add another 7,000 beds.

“If at all we announce any relaxation in lockdown by June 2021, there are several models that suggest a third wave might come between July to September 2021. We need to understand that these are just predictions and there is no surety about the third wave, but we need to be prepared for handling it, and hence we are constantly ramping up our health infrastructure,” Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner of the BMC, said.

The state is under an effective lockdown which began on April 23, and it is expected to end on May 15.

Experts argue that the lockdown is the most effective time to scale up infrastructure to tackle a spike in cases, which is likely to occur once the current restrictions on movement are relaxed.

“Mumbai saw a massive spike last month and sustained it because of constant capacity increase in beds & facilities. As the virus mutates and targets different age groups, our response to it must actively mutate as well,” Aaditya Thackeray tweeted on Monday.

“Historically about such scenarios there is a trend that the second wave is more damaging than the first wave, but the third wave is less damaging than the second wave. However, our preparations have to be obviously for more damage than the second wave,” state task force member Joshi said.

Meanwhile, BMC chief Iqbal Singh Chahal on Monday appealed to more and more citizens to get tested as the city’s daily testing figures are falling down. “Our testing was more than doubled and had touched 56,000 tests on a single day in April but now it has been observed that the testing figures have fallen to around 28,000 on Sunday. It is likely to fall further during weekends. Our aggressive testing policy has resulted in reduction of positivity rate. This might have reduced the natural demand for home collection of swabs by our citizens in the last few days. We need to increase the testing to 40,000 per day, at least, if not more. I request you to appeal to our eminent citizens to come forward and test themselves to increase Covid testing to maximum possible level,” he said.