The city of Mumbai is all set to welcome a new hospital for infectious diseases with a 5,000-bed capacity, thanks to the latest decision taken by the state Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that has choked the city’s health infrastructure in ways unprecedented.
Chief Secretary Sanjay Kumar, in a statement to the media, has stated that the new multipurpose facility will be built with the idea of converting it into a full-fledged infectious disease hospital at a short notice. This is a significant step in the right direction considering that initially, Kasturba Hospital used to be the city’s only dedicated hospital for infectious diseases with a meagre 125 beds which got exhausted as soon as the cases of COVID-19 witnessed a surge.
Mumbai’s high death toll due to COVID-19 comprises of a large number of lives lost due to unavailability of treatment facilities during the initial days of the pandemic. Although state-run hospitals and the recently developed BMC facilities, along with private hospitals have been able to massively improve their infrastructure over the past few months, the city and its outskirts are still in need of affordable treatment facilities, which the state government believes will be addressed through this proposed hospital.
The project was initially discussed between the CM Uddhav Thackeray and Municipal Commissioner IS Chahal in a meeting with other senior bureaucrats. Thackeray has asked his officials to scout for a 20-acre plot of land. The initial speculations suggest Dahisar check naka and Mulund check naka as the probable locations, although it is still too early to determine the final address for the hospital.
Until now, a total of 12,854 persons have died owing to the outbreak of the pandemic. So far, 17,37,716 samples have been tested for the novel coronavirus in labs operational across the state. While 8,74,267 persons are under home quarantine, 45,222 others have been admitted to institutional quarantine centres.
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