PMC puts brake on jumbo facility upgrade as city sees fall in virus cases
With limited critical care facility at its hospitals and the possibility of a second wave post Diwali, the civic body is not ready to release requisition of private hospitals.
The 800-bed jumbo facility at College Of Engineering, Pune (COEP) grounds in Shivajinagar run by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) will currently operate will 600 beds with the city seeing a dip in Covid cases.
With limited critical care facility at its hospitals and the possibility of a second wave post Diwali, the civic body is not ready to release requisition of private hospitals.
PMC has hired Medbro agency to run the facility which would be responsible to provide manpower to the facility, including expert doctors and other staff. The jumbo facility is a dedicated Covid-19 facility for critical patients and is equipped with ICU care. Although the facility has a total capacity of 800 beds, currently the civic body has allocated the tender for only 600 beds.
When the city saw its peak of Covid cases in September, the administration had stated that the facility would run to its full capacity shortly and a tender for floated. With virus cases decreasing, the civic body has put a brake on upgrading the facility.
PMC additional commissioner Rubal Agrawal, who is incharge of the facility, said, “With the number of cases going down, we have allocated a tender to run only 600 beds though the facility can accommodate 800 beds. As per the contract, we need to give them a 24-hour window to increase the bed capacity to 800. The contract also states that we have to pay at least for a minimum of 50% of the beds which will be run even if they are empty. So, we have to pay for 300 beds no matter how many beds are vacant.”
Agrawal said that even though the cases are going down the civic body does not intend to give up the requisition as of yet given that the possible second wave is just round the corner.
She said, “It is a pandemic and we will need the help of private hospitals to fight it. At the start of the pandemic in March we did not have a dedicated Covid-19 centre and so we had to rely on private hospitals completely. We have critical care available at the jumbo facility now, but we are not yet ready to give up the requisition.”
As of Sunday, PMC reported over 1.59 lakh cases in the city of which 1.48 lakh have recovered, 4,122 deaths were reported due to the infection and 6,706 are active cases. As of Monday evening, the jumbo facility had 600 allocated beds of which 155 were vacant, including 107 isolation beds with oxygen, 43 ICU beds and 5 ventilators.
