BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will be increasing its COVID-19 beds to 21,000 in the next week for moderate to critically ill patients. Meanwhile, it has also decided to set up 50,000 beds in COVID-19 Care Centre (CCC)-2 for the mild symptomatic patients. For this, it has directed all its ward officers to be on alert. Officials said they want to be ready for the worst scenario. According to the data, the active cases in the city has increased from 9,690 cases until March 1 to 33,961 until March 24, recording a surge of 250 per cent since the COVID-19 outbreak.
Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner, BMC, said more than 70 per cent patients, who are asymptomatic, have been kept under home quarantine. Only 10 per cent to 15 per cent need hospital beds and most of them are on oxygen. “Considering the projection made by experts of the active cases crossing 3 lakh in the first week of April across the state, we need to be well prepared to handle the situation. For this, we will be increasing the COVID-19 beds in civic- and private-run hospitals. Meanwhile, if we get more than 10,000 cases daily, only 10 per cent to 15 per cent need to be hospitalised. The rest can be shifted to the CCC-2 facilities of the civic body,” he said.
Iqbal Singh Chahal, BMC commissioner, said they have decided to increase the total bed capacity of DCHC/DCH in Mumbai from 13,773 (as of today, out of which 5,140 are vacant as of now) to 21,000 in the next 15 days in various hospitals of the city.
“Assume that the number of positive cases in the due course of time under BMC increases to 10,000 cases per day with assumption that approximately 15 per cent of these would be symptomatic (requiring beds as per Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) guidelines). Also, assume that every symptomatic patient would require a hospital bed (which is less than 50 per cent today). Considering a 14 days cycle of bed occupancy, the total number of beds required to handle 10,000 positive cases everyday for a period of 6 to 8 weeks would be approximately 21,000,” he said.
He added that, keeping the adequate health infrastructure and extremely low mortality rate in mind, there is absolutely no cause for panic or worry in the city of Mumbai. BMC is in full control of the situation and confident of controlling the pandemic in due course of time," Chahal added.
