BMC’s focus areas: Reducing deaths; quicker medical help

The city will soon be able to bring down its mortality rate to 3%, from the current 3.2%, and on a par with the national average of less than 2%, assured Brihanmumbai

The city will soon be able to bring down its mortality rate to 3%, from the current 3.2%, and on a par with the national average of less than 2%, assured Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) chief IS Chahal on Tuesday.

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“We have managed to bring down Mumbai’s mortality to 3.2% from the high figure of over 7% in April. This was a result of targeted measures taken by the civic body. With the measures in place, in a few days, mortality will further go down to 3%,” Chahal said at a video-conference with the media organised on Tuesday evening.

As of Tuesday, Mumbai has a total of 32,974 Covid-19 cases, with 1,065 deaths. According to data from the BMC, there are 22,912 active cases in Mumbai (total cases minus the number of deaths and discharged patients). Mumbai has so far conducted 1.75 lakh tests, with 13,000 tests per million of the population.

Among the measures taken are contact-tracing and early detection of high-risk co-morbid persons, shifting such persons to government facilities for observation, detecting elderly and co-morbid patients with low oxygen saturation, streamlining rules of dialysis. “We cannot let the number scare us. We have to gauge Mumbai’s situation by our health infrastructure’s ability to handle a surge. We have to see if we have doctors, nurses, beds and equipment such as critical beds, ventilators, and oxygen beds.”

Contrary to the projection that Mumbai will have 44,000-46,000 cases by the end of May, the city is expected to have 26,000 to 27,000 active cases by the end of May, the municipal commissioner said. In comparison, Mumbai will have 14,000 hospital and healthcare beds by May-end, and already has 29,949 beds for mild symptomatic patients, called Covid Care Centres - category 2 (CCC2) facilities, he said.

Following reports of delays in bed and ambulance allocation to critical patients, with allegations of deaths of such patients due to delay, the BMC has decided to revamp its bed management system. Chahal attributed the delay to BMC’s cycle of reporting cases and preparing a bed demand chart, over-burdened 1916 helplines, and private labs relaying information of patients upto 4 or 5 days late. “The earlier cycle of reporting patients was 2pm to 2pm. Labs would report cases up to 4pm. Hence, the final list of patients would be compiled by 7pm. Bed allotment would start after 7pm, and go on till 1.30am or later. Doctors were tired, and patients were receiving calls of bed availability in the middle of the night.”

With the new cycle, the list will be prepared overnight after reporting is completed at midnight and bed allotment will start at 8am, with a deadline for bed allotment to these cases till 12 noon. Reporting and bed allotment will also happen at 2pm, 3pm, 5pm, and 9pm, said Chahal.

Private labs have been instructed not to delay in reporting names of Covid-19 positive patients, that must be submitted on the same day. At the end of the day, there should be zero pending cases to be reported to BMC. If this procedure is not followed, labs can lose their licence.

BMC has decided to increase the number of 1916 helplines. To ensure ambulance services are received on time, ambulances will be fitted with a GPS tracker, and will be centrally allotted to nearest persons based on their location. “Citizens will also be able to Uber an ambulance very soon,” Chahal said.

“Based on the CM’s request for Covid warriors, 3700 doctors, nurses and paramedical staff responded for Mumbai. We asked them for a choice of where they want to work”, Chahal said. “Of these, 570 doctors and nurses have chosen jumbo facilities, or Seven hills hospital, and received their appointment letters on Tuesday.” BMC needs their help in opening clinics for non-Covid patients, because facilities for Covid patients are being managed well.

To ensure all satellite medical services are fully functional, Chahal said, suburban trains should be started on a “skeleton basis” during work hours of 7am to 10am and 5pm to 8pm, to ferry workers home. “Presently, staff from neighbourhoods of Mumbai such Nerul and Panvel travel to Mumbai by road, and spend up to six hours per day changing buses and commuting to and from work.” This is reduced to 2.5 hours per day by local train. If trains cannot be started, BMC has decided to increase the frequency of BEST buses.

It has also launched ‘Chase the Virus Mission’ to trace upto 15 high-risk contacts per positive person in slum areas, up from the earlier target of 10 high-risk contacts per positive person.

Will continue giving HCQS to frontline workers, high-risk contacts: State govt

The state government has clarified that it will continue administering Hydroxychloroquine (HCQS) given to high-risk contacts of Covid-19 patients and the frontline workers, as per the Indian Council For Medical Research (ICMR) protocol. The government officials said that the doses given in the country are milder in quantity than the World Health Organization (WHO) trial and the concerns raised by the WHO were not applicable here.

“We have been giving two tablets of 400mg in the first week and then one tablet of 400 mg each for the next six weeks.WHO was giving two tablets of 800mg each in the first week and 800mg in the subsequent six weeks. The benefit of the HCQS is outweighed by the potential risk in people to whom the doses are administered,” said Pradeep Vyas, principal secretary, public health department.