Mumbai: Find Covid bed only via war rooms, parallels spark chaos, says BMC

MUMBAI: The BMC, in a series of tweets late on Saturday, informed citizens of guidelines on how to get a Covid bed at a city hospital.
It said that ward war rooms are the only authority to allocate beds, but in exceptional cases, serious patients can approach hospitals for walk-in beds with a Covid- positive report.
Using the hashtag, #WarRoomsBattlingCorona, the tweets read, ‘If you need a COVID bed at a hospital in Mumbai, this thread of tweets is for you. If you are promising a bed to someone in need of it, this thread is for you too.
With due respect to their concern for their loved ones, we request families to allow doctors to assess patient’s condition and recommend whether an ICU is needed. ICUs are for extreme emergencies. There is now a provision for doctors to visit home and recommend kind of care needed. There are many in need of a bed, as much as the other. Thus, you may have to wait a while. But Ward War Rooms are the only ones who can allocate a bed. If you have a complaint about their service, please escalate.
Our humble request. Please don’t create parallel windows for bed allotment because that only leads to chaos and confusion... Please follow MCGM protocols.’
Bandra MLA Zeeshan Siddique who has been helping patients find beds, replied to the civic body said that tweets were in bad taste. “If BMC was doing it all then why would people tag us for help on social media? We appreciate the work the civic body is doing but social workers/activists/influencers/politicians/common citizens-everyone is working together to help the common man. We are all in this together,” he said.