As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to show an alarming spike across Mumbai, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal on Sunday said that the civic body will activate and make operational more beds at dedicated hospitals and COVID care centres. The civic body has once again published the list of ward war rooms and appealed to the citizen to avail hospital beds through ward war rooms only.
On Saturday, the city reported 9,090 new cases of coronavirus, while the number of cases shot up 10 11,163 cases on Sunday, the highest single-day count this year. Almost 80 per cent of the intensive care unit (ICU) beds are occupied by severely infected patients.
"We have operationalised an additional 3,000 beds in dedicated COVID-19 health care centres and dedicated COVID-19 hospitals under in last seven days," Chahal said. "The number of beds available on our live real-time dashboard for allotment has gone up from 12,906 to 15,971," he added.
As of Saturday night, 4,160 beds were vacant for allotment, an official statement from BMC stated, adding that an additional 3,000 beds (including 400 in ICUs) in the dedicated COVID-19 health care centres and dedicated COVID-19 hospitals in the coming seven days will be made operational.
Chahal pointed out that some patients were becoming critical by ignorantly waiting for their choice of a medical facility for hospitalisation and not going by the protocol set by the civic body. Chahal said "I appeal to the patients not to wait for hospitalisation. They should instead occupy beds wherever available to start with their treatment if they are symptomatic, as the treatment protocol is similar everywhere and well established now. Abundant beds are available in other hospitals. Beds will be allotted as per protocol via ward level war rooms, no walk-in admissions in hospital will be allowed."
According to Chahal, BMC has also operationalised 30 CCC-2 (COVID-19 care centres) facilities for asymptomatic COVID-19 patients in the last one week with a capacity to accommodate around 4,600 patients and another 18,300 beds in CCC-2 facilities are available in reserve with the civic body, Chahal said.
The CCC-1 facilities are set up mostly in hotels and halls and do not have a 24-hour monitoring facility, while CCC-2 are government facilities where doctors and nurses are available round-the-clock.
Meanwhile, activating the beds is not going to be a very easy task. With the flattening of the pandemic curve post October 2020, many hospitals have reduced their Covid bed strength to make space for non-Covid patients. Now, they are struggling to make arrangements for it.