Mumbai’s SevenHills Hospital has emerged as the city’s guardian angel during the pandemic, as the hospital has reportedly admitted nearly one-fifth of the city’s overall COVID-19 admissions.
The hospital admitted 21,000 COVID patients as of last week, making it the highest by any single COVID-19 facility located in Mumbai. Additional Municipal Commissioner of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Suresh Kakani said, “We knew this was the only facility that could be readied in the minimum possible time. That decision has paid off.”
The hospital was embroiled in a legal dispute with the BMC while also filing a multi-crore insolvency plea in 2018. Although SevenHills was designed to be a 1,500-bed establishment, only 306 beds were established, but only 55 were functional since the insolvency plea.
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Preparations to expand the capacity of SevenHills began the same day as the city reported its first two COVID-19 cases in March 2020. Then Municipal Commissioner, Praveen Pardeshi toured SevenHills and briefed his team to create space for 1,200 beds at the institution in addition to activating the existing 306 beds.
This initiative was known internally as “Mission Renew SevenHills” and involved the clearing of debris and other materials from partially constructed floors. As per Officer On Special Duty, Dr Maharudra Kumbhar, around 350 trucks left the campus that day with debris. Moreover, workers at the location also found more than 50 snake carcasses, indicating that the place had fallen into a complete state of disrepair.
Over the next two days, the eighth-floor ward at the hospital was to be opened as a quarantine facility which meant that workers had to ready services like lights, fans, canteen services, diagnostics and bio-medical waste disposal, and so on.
Separately, as international passengers walked into the quarantine facility on March 14, 2020, several workers fled the site fearing infections. As per Dean Dr Balkrishna Adsul, although work subsequently resumed, maintaining manpower proved to be a major hurdle until at least June.
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Private hospitals like HN Reliance pitched in to help manage the wards and ICUs whereas Aditya Birla Foundation, Jupiter Hospital etc helped repair the beds while also assisting with other equipment.
Dr Kumbhar recalled that SevenHills had its trickiest day of the pandemic on June 16 when the oxygen capacity had to be increased by adding a new 13 kilolitre tank which required the existing tank to be shut off for up to four hours. He added that there were 350 patients on oxygen support at the time, but everything went along smoothly.
Given the fact that the hospital has admitted one-fifth of the city’s COVID-19 hospitalisations, it should come as no surprise that SevenHills witnessed the most COVID deaths among Mumbai’s hospitals.
Data shows that of around 3,000 ICU admissions, 44 per cent of them couldn’t recover. In-Charge at the hospital’s ICU, Dr Rahul Sawalia said that the institution admitted all patients including those from MMR as well as persons with multiple comorbidities.
The BMC has reportedly spent around ₹200 crores on reviving SevenHills. Municipal Commissioner Kakani said that even though jumbo facilities around Mumbai may be taken down as the caseload decreases, SevenHills will continue to operate as a COVID treatment centre.
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