Mumbai: Notwithstanding the lack of grant of a special package of Rs 25,000 crore and the clearance of GST dues of Rs 16,000 crore, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray is not in a mood to go the West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee’s way to take on the centre during the present CoVID-19 crisis. Instead, Thackeray, after a video conference with the two inter-ministerial central teams (IMCT) in Mumbai and Pune, assured to implement their slew of suggestions to fight the pandemic.
ICMTs made a strong case for increasing institutional quarantine facilities and focused CoVID-19 tests. It also stressed that special care needs to be taken in densely populated areas like Dharavi, where people would have to be moved to other places for quarantine. Further, ICMTs suggested that the government should increase the tests in CoVID and non-COVID hospitals and restart private dispensaries and nursing homes so that non-CoVID-19 patients can get treatment.
Public Health Minister Rajesh Tope, who accompanied Thackeray, told FPJ, “The government has tweaked its containment strategy, whereby more institutional quarantine facilities instead of self-quarantine will be provided in Dharavi and other highly populated areas. The health department and civic bodies will launch an early detection system, whereby all persons above sixty years with comorbidity and without symptoms will be lifted and placed under quarantine. BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will put in place a mechanism whereby information of CoVID hospitals will be available at one click.’’ He further informed that the civic body will increase the number of ambulances.
Tope said the centre has allowed the state government to implement plasma therapy on an experimental basis. He stated that the government has made a fresh plea to supply personal protective equipment kits.
In its response, the union ministry of health appreciated the state government’s CoVID-19 containment strategy and said it is working in collaboration with the latter. The ministry’s joint secretary Luv Agarwal said, “Besides the Rapid Response Team, two other central teams are currently working with the Government of Maharashtra. In a collaborative effort with the state government, preparatory activities are drawn up, taking into account the best case scenario, average and worst case scenarios. The centre has already asked the state government to augment institutional quarantine facilities in dense slum pockets and also ramp up its contact tracing programme there,’’ he added.
