BMC begins home visits to assess ICU need of Covid patients

From Monday, BMC has begun sending its health workers for home inspection if a patient calls and states that she needs intensive care. Depending on medical parameters, the health workers will work with the war-room and refer the patient.

The BMC has deputed at least 15,000 health workers, said Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal, to do contact tracing, for home visits, and for assessing medical requirements of patients.

Mumbai on Tuesday recorded 7,873 new Covid-19 cases, reaching over 86,000 active infections. Across Maharashtra, 60,212 new cases were recorded, taking active caseload to close to 6 lakh.

ICUs and ventilators have become hard to find with jumbo centres, major hospitals like KEM, Sion and Nair running full and private hospitals running to full capacity of their isolation beds. As on Tuesday, 12 ventilators and 45 ICUs were vacant.

“I have instructed jumbo centres to only refer those who need ICU support. Most patients can be maintained on oxygen support. We will try to cut down on unnecessary ICU admissions,” Chahal said.

He added that all jumbo centres will be instructed to closely monitor medical parameters and wean patients off ICU support if they get better and can be maintained on only oxygen beds.

Chahal said most cases do not turn severe and very few need ventilator support. “If a patient calls the war room for ICU, our health worker will visit their home and assess their requirement. The war room will refer accordingly,” he said.

Mumbai on Tuesday reported 27 deaths due to Covid-19, its total fatality now 12,093. Maharashtra reported 281 deaths, taking the state toll to 58286.

At least 1,543 deaths across the state have been labelled as deaths of Covid-19 patients due to other illnesses.

The state’s active case load grew five-fold from 1.18 lakh to 5.93 lakh in the last one month. Health officials said they are trying to push daily vaccinations to 6 lakh to cover a larger population faster. State’s daily vaccination numbers slightly improved in the last two days, from 2.23 lakh on Sunday to 3.29 lakh on Monday.

Mumbai conducted 45,524 vaccinations, up from 39,300 conducted on Monday. Civic officials said availability of vaccines continues to remain a problem with only a few days stock in store for public and private hospitals.