While Mumbai’s shortage of ICU and oxygen beds is well documented, patients in Navi Mumbai are reportedly facing similar circumstances. As a consequence of the shortage, patients are being made to wait for hours to be assigned a bed. One such patient had to wait for 6 to 8 hours while awaiting admission at the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) COVID-19 centre situated in Turbhe.
While the patient was admitted on Thursday, her oxygen levels began to drop on Sunday. Subsequently, her husband was said that she would require an oxygen bed. “We had to wait seven hours for an ambulance equipped with oxygen cylinders. We finally shifted her to the CIDCO exhibition center at Vashi. But at 9 pm on Sunday I was told that she would have to be shifted to a private hospital as there were no ventilators at the CIDCO centre. We were shocked. We have money and know influential people and still can’t get proper treatment. This makes me wonder: what happens to the poorest of the poor?”, the husband said.
Also read - Private Hospitals In Navi Mumbai Return ₹32 Lakhs To COVID-19 Patients
Commissioner of the NMMC, Abhijit Bangar said - “Patients from Sangli, Satara, Kolhapur, Panvel, Thane, Raigad are coming to Navi Mumbai. We can’t refuse them treatment. We are planning to build capacity in the next few days. Once this is done we will have around 510 ICU beds and 40 per cent of them will have ventilators.”
The commissioner also said that around 40 per cent of the ICU beds in Navi Mumbai were occupied by people from outside the region. Local data reveals that Navi Mumbai has a total of 335 ICU beds while only 135 of them have a ventilator. Further, the region has 3,310 standard COVID-19 patient beds as well as an additional 2,260 beds that have oxygen cylinders.
Meanwhile, the coronavirus tally in Navi Mumbai crossed 33,000 this past weekend. The rising cases coupled with the fact that there’s a partial scarcity of ventilators and oxygen beds for patients are causing new headaches for the local health and civic authorities.
Also Read - Coronavirus Tally In Navi Mumbai Crossed 33,000-Mark
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