Mumbai’s peripheral hospital which has largely remained neglected for years saw the addition of 500 beds dedicated to COVID-19 patients. This happened over the course of the last three months with the surge in the cases of coronavirus in the city.
However, adequate manpower still poses to be a problem even with the renewed facilities in suburban hospitals. The BMC had earlier started with 250 beds in these peripheral hospitals on March 22. It has now managed to bring the strength up to 775.
The availability of ICU beds further remains to be a problem in these facilities. Apart from the augmentation plan in the peripheral hospitals, the BMC plans to add over 100 beds to the Cooper hospital.
The BMC had earlier planned to add 300 more beds to the already existing ones in view of the monsoons. The civic body had been expecting a surge in the cases of coronavirus in the upcoming days. According to the data shared by the BMC, the surge in cases is expected from three northern wards, P-North (Malad, Malwani), R-North (Dahisar) and R-South (Kandivli). Besides increasing the number of beds, the civic body had set up mobile ICU facilities in the jumbo care facilities at the MMRDA ground in the BKC and NESCO exhibition ground in Goregaon to treat patients suffering from coronavirus.
In the past, in a worrisome situation, the BMC had stated that 99 per cent of the ICU beds under BMC was occupied. At that time, the municipal and the state-run hospitals accounted for 645 ICU beds while the number of patients requiring critical care was clearly five times over. As per data, 65 per cent of the total 4,292 beds with oxygen support were occupied by critical patients. Maharashtra currently has 1,42,900 cases of coronavirus with 69,528 cases in Mumbai itself.
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