As Covid-19 rages, Mumbai ramps up health infrastructure

Data released by the state public health department on Sunday on dedicated Covid hospitals showed the city’s oxygen-supported beds and isolation beds have gone up three times, thanks to new ‘jumbo’ makeshift facilities set up in the city’s exhibition grounds. The number of oxygen-supported beds has gone up from 1,413 on May 12 to 4,508 on May 24.

Mumbai: The epicentre of India’s Covid-19 epicentre, Mumbai, has ramped up its critical healthcare facilities across 10 hospitals, some of them makeshift arrangements, in the past two weeks as the city looks at ways to address a shortage of beds for patients with moderate to severe symptoms.

Data released by the state public health department on Sunday on dedicated Covid hospitals showed the city’s oxygen-supported beds and isolation beds have gone up three times, thanks to new ‘jumbo’ makeshift facilities set up in the city’s exhibition grounds. The number of oxygen-supported beds has gone up from 1,413 on May 12 to 4,508 on May 24, while that of isolation beds has increased to 9,916 from 3,690 and ICU beds to 1,204 from 1,023.

This ramp-up comes as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation faced criticism with several patients moving from one hospital to the other in search of beds, with some succumbing to the disease due to late hospitalisation.

Jumbo facilities of 200 oxygen-supported beds each have come up in the city’s north, south, east and western suburbs. These are besides the five city hospitals that are already treating Covid-19 care patients. ICU beds in the city’s leading government hospitals have come down even as clinical assessment shows that most patients coming into hospitals need oxygen more than ventilators.

ESIS commissioner Sudhakar Shinde told ET that his office had converted a 250-bed suburban hospital for Covid-19 treatment.

In the last one week, the Maharashtra government forced also private hospitals to give beds for Covid-19 treatment and capped the prices. Private hospitals in Mumbai have committed to give 1,200 beds for Covid-19 care.

Last week the city recorded the highest number of cases, even as there are signs of containment of the disease in hotspot areas like Dharavi. Additional municipal commissioner Ashwini Bhide in a tweet said Dharavi’s doubling rate had gone up to 21 days, “with huge efforts from the ward officers, local representatives, NGOs”. Bhide also said about 1.67 lakh elderly people from congested areas had been proactively screened.