Now, Mumbai to get Covid centres in 5-star hotels, 3 field hospitals

BMC will set up 3 new jumbo field hospitals in the city

Struggling to cope up with the massive corona patient load, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Monday decided to convert some Four-star and Five-star hotels as Covid centres and will also set up 3 new jumbo field hospitals in the city.

Municipal Commissioner I.S. Chahal said that some 5/4 star hotels in the city and suburbs are being requisitioned immediately to create Covid Care Centre-2 facilities for Corona positive patients.

"These will be dovetailed and run by professionals from major private hospitals. It will make a large number of beds available to new needy patients by shifting substantially recovered patients quickly to these CCC2 facilities to be managed by medicos," Chahal told IANS.

Besides, the government will build 3 new Jumbo Field Hospitals in different locations in Mumbai - the worst-hit in the country - each with a bed capacity of 2,000 including 200 ICUs and 70 per cent oxygenated beds, he said.

This will take the number of such Jumbo Field Hospitals as mega-Covid care facilities from 7 to 10 in the country's commercial capital in the next few weeks as Mumbai's 'active caseload' touched 91,100 to date.

The civic body has already added 325 new ICU beds in various city hospitals, taking up the number of 2,466 now, while the total number of Covid beds in the online allotment dashboard has shot up to 19,151 in 141 hospitals of which only 3,777 beds are currently vacant.

In a week's time, the BMC will add another 1,100 Covid beds including 125 ICUs, he added, as Mumbai grapples with 91,100 'active cases' or nearly 20 per cent of the state's 565,587 active cases to date and adding 9K-plus new patients daily.

Strengthening the systems, Chahal said more Nodal Officers shall be appointed to the 24 Ward War Rooms and 7 Jumbo Field Hospitals to work in two shifts - 3pm-11pm and 11pm-7am.

All bed allotments in the second shifts shall be mostly for the Jumbo Field Hospitals with fast-track beds given throughout the night to the patients on arrival after assessing his/her medical condition.

"This will ensure that all needy patients shall get beds on fast track even during the night, besides during daytime. It will apply to even those awaiting their Covid test reports, or who have not got their tests done, but will be admitted to the 'suspected category', to ensure precious human lives are saved," Chahal pointed out.

Another major decision is the lab test positive report received by the BMC usually around midnight which will now be supplemented with another list to be submitted by the labs daily at 6 a.m.

This will help the BMC Ward War Rooms to start calling all patients tested positive the previous day and the next morning also to slash the waiting time for bed allotments by 24 hours.

For this all labs are directed to ensure a turn-around of 24 hrs, prioritise swabs of symptomatic patients while processing Covid tests collected from homes.

--IANS

qn/skp/