The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) saw a whopping 9,200 new cases of COVID-19 in the first eight days of April. The rise led to the scarcity of beds in COVID care centre and hospitals. So, the civic body has decided to set COVID Care Centre (CCC) at schools and hostels.
The civic body has selected at least four civic schools and two hostels to increase the number of beds. However, the civic body assured that there is no need to panic as it will create new facilities.
As per the dashboard for beds availability, the city has available facilities are 104 ICU beds, 166 isolation beds with oxygen, 762 isolation beds without oxygen and 46 ventilators.
For the last two months, like other parts of the state, Navi Mumbai is also witnessing a consistent rise in the active cases of COVID-19. From 799 active cases in the first week of February, the number of active cases crossed 10,000 on April 8.
Most of the closed CCCs have been restarted and the COVID centre at the Exhibition Centre in Vashi has 783 patients followed by 376 patients at Radheswami Satsang centre and 308 patients at the Export centre at Turbhe. Similarly, other COVID centres across the city are packed with patients. As the new cases are coming in big number than patients getting discharged, the civic body will soon run out of beds.
“We will soon start CCC at four civic schools and two hostels in Kharghar to accommodate more patients,” said a senior civic official, adding that the Indiabulls COVID care centre in Panvel has been restarted and it can accommodate 1000 patients.
At present, the number of active cases of COVID-19 under the NMMC is 10751 which is the highest since the outbreak of the pandemic.
