The BMC is ready with 20,431 beds to tackle the worsening Covid situation. While 77.43 per cent of the available beds are in government or civic hospitals, 22.57 per cent are in private hospitals. With the new civic body guidelines recommending home isolation for patients with mild symptoms, only 35.45 per cent of beds are occupied.
The BMC’s dashboard indicates only 7,234 beds are occupied in the city. Out of these, 73.27 per cent are in public hospitals and 26.72 per cent in private hospitals. During the second wave, the scarcity of medical oxygen due to the high rate of hospitalisation was faced by large metro cities like Delhi. Learning from that experience, the BMC has kept around 52 per cent oxygen beds and seven per cent ventilator beds ready to tackle the third wave.
Currently, only 26 per cent of oxygen beds are occupied, the reason public health minister Rajesh Tope and civic chief Iqbal Singh Chahal gave for not imposing a lockdown in the city. Of the occupied oxygen beds, 52 per cent are in public hospitals and 48 per cent in private hospitals, as per the dashboard. Mangala Gomare, the chief of BMC’s medical health department, told The Free Press Journal that most positive patients in the city are asymptomatic, the reason for the civic chief to send out a missing to not panic.
“Most of our beds are vacant because people are recovering in the confines of their homes,” she said, adding that the situation can worsen if people don’t follow state guidelines and Covid-appropriate behaviour.
Assistant municipal commissioner of G-North ward, Kiran Dighavkar said the BMC has placed the home quarantine responsibility on housing societies. “Our ward war room teams call patients frequently and check their whereabouts and health status. Further, we are in contact with housing society office bearers.
If home quarantine patients don’t follow rules and start wandering around, these office bearers are the first ones to inform us,” he said. Large housing clusters like Eden Woods in Thane have been monitoring positive patients in their complex on a daily basis. TN Raghunatha, who is the secretary of the federation of 19-building complex Eden Woods, said they have 54 cases already and this time senior citizens and children are also hit.
