Thane battles shortage of Covid beds, again

On April 2, 43-year-old Saji Nair, a resident of Majiwada, redialled the number of the Thane Municipal Corporation’s war room – the nodal office where callers who wish to register for a bed in a Covid hospital are directed to their respective area’s medical officer to initiate the procedure – but like the previous 15 times, he didn’t get through

On April 2, 43-year-old Saji Nair, a resident of Majiwada, redialled the number of the Thane Municipal Corporation’s war room – the nodal office where callers who wish to register for a bed in a Covid hospital are directed to their respective area’s medical officer to initiate the procedure – but like the previous 15 times, he didn’t get through. He cut the call, and then dialled the number of a private hospital close to his Majiwada residence in Thane. No answer. The previous private hospitals that he had reached out to did not have any bed available. Finally, his family physician Dr P C Kulkarni called him to visit Fortis hospital in Mulund. Nair, who had tested positive for Covid-19 a week before, finally found a bed and got himself admitted.

Workers transport oxygen cylinders to civic hospital, in Thane. (Praful Gangurde / HT Photo)

“I had a fever and a lot of weakness as well, I needed constant care. My aged parents stay with me and home quarantine would have meant putting their lives at risk,” Nair said.

Even as Thane has seen 16,409 cases in the first 10 days of April, more than 400 patients are currently admitted outside the city. The city has 4,499 beds available. As of April 10, the number of patients admitted in hospitals in Thane were 3,372, and only 383 Oxygen and 79 ICU beds were still free.

Thane is one of the four big urban centres that is driving Maharashtra’s second wave: together with Mumbai, Pune, and Nagpur, they accounted for 59% of Maharashtra’s cases in the first four days of April. Thane, in particular, has seen a particularly steep rise to a total of 95,737 cases till now.

All the same, overstrained healthcare infrastructure is not a new story. The first wave saw a similar situation unfold, when in June 2020 – at the time that the state’s caseload had begun to ascend towards a peak -- the city launched its first dedicated Covid Hospital, Global Hospital which had a bed capacity of 1024. During its peak (September 17), the centre had 700 beds available. Currently, there are less than 50 beds vacant.

The municipality is seeking to address the shortage. It reopened the 400-bed Covid care facility at Kausa, after shutting down operations in month of October, besides roping in a few more private hospitals as Covid hospitals. A 100-bed facililty at Vartak Nagar was opened on April 3 by the civic body. In all, Thane has 26 Covid hospitals and 2 Covid centres.

“We are making additional provisions for increasing the number of beds, there are many places which we had converted to a Covid centre. We are reviving all these places and also in touch with our Covid task force team to provide medical staff support,” Sandeep Malvi, deputy municipal commissioner.

“Despite the onset of the second wave there were no proper restrictions in the city. Delivery boys and parcel services were frequenting housing societies, as were visitors. Roadside eateries were open, people crowded outside shops blocking the footpath making it difficult for those walking along the road to follow social distancing,” said Shashikumar Nair, a city-based citizen activist. Lax behaviour, and failure to mask up and follow effective distancing is being touted as one of the main reasons for the new wave.

Localities like Majiwada-Manpada and Vartak Nagar, which have the plushest residential complexes and townships, are recording more than 500 to 600 cases every day since April 4. Moreover, there is a moving population in this area as most people travel to Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and other neighbouring cities for work, often using some form of public transport. Before the new set of restrictions, including weekend lockdown, was imposed starting April 5, many housing societies had grown lax in terms of containing the spread of the virus by allowing free flow of visitors.

During the first wave, TMC had not only sealed buildings but also areas within 2km radius of sealed buildings were considered containment zones. Moreover, they roped in Rapid Action force in Lokmanya- Savarkar Nagar, Wagle Estate and Mumbra wards to patrol regularly and ensure Lockdown norms are followed. Similarly, in the month of May, SRPF jawans were stationed in Mumbra.

The TMC had not tightened the restrictions in hotspots or announced containment zones till April 3, when the corporation started sealing the buildings after 1482 cases were recorded on that day. The last time the city had seen such a high tally was in October 2020, when the highest daily caseload recorded was nearly half: 727.

“We have announced hotspots in the city, these are clusters which have an increased number of positive cases. We have sealed 95 buildings in the city which had more than five positive Covid-19 cases since April 3. Among these, the greatest number of buildings are sealed in Diva, while not a single building was sealed in Mumbra and Wagale Estate ward. With Majiwada-Manpada ward witnessing the highest spike, the corporation has also sealed 316 floors of different buildings in this ward alone,” said Ashok Burpulle, Deputy Municipal Commissioner, TMC.

There are also growing concerns of a new, double mutant strain of the virus, which has been found in samples from Maharashtra that were studied for genome sequencing by the Centre. And while more information on that is still awaited, experts said that further restrictions will help arrest the spread of the virus. What will also help is vaccination: something that wasn’t happening during the first wave.

Although Thane city has 54 operational vaccination centres, only around 34 are functioning at all times as some centres are open only on alternate days. Till now, there have been 1.8 lakh vaccinations including first and booster dosages. On a daily basis initially there used to be 10,000 vaccinations from March 1 onwards but as there are fewer vaccines available since March 30, the civic body has reduced it to around 6000 to 7000 vaccines daily.

“We are giving preference to those with prior booking, but we ensure that the crowd is managed well and in case a particular centre has a greater number of people we contact the nearest vaccine centre and divert the crowd,” Malvi said.