Mumbai crossed the 20,000 mark on Sunday after reporting the highest single-day rise of 1,595 new COVID-19 cases. The city now has 20,150 cases. It also recorded 38 new deaths, pushing the death toll to 734. The city’s doubling rate is now 14.5 days.
Interactive map of confirmed coronavirus cases in India
The BMC has cited addition of 590 people tested positive by private labs between May 10 and 14 for the spike in figures. The labs update the reports directly on Indian Council of Medical Research’s portal. Of the 38 deaths, 23 patients had co-morbidities. Three of those who lost their lives were under 40, 20 were above 60, while the rest were in the 40-60 age group. On the positive side, 206 people were discharged after recovery. So far, 5,012 people have been discharged.
Municipal Commissioner I.S. Chahal visited Sion hospital and other parts of the city such as Bainganwadi in Govandi on Sunday. While speaking to mediapersons at the hospital, he said the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) would be augmenting its bed capacity (including quarantine beds) to one lakh soon. As on May 16, Mumbai had 30,597 CCC1 beds of which only 12,994 were occupied by high-risk contacts. The city also has 29,805 CCC2 beds of which only 2,657 are occupied at the moment.
Also read: Maharashtra’s total tally breaches the 33,000-mark
Some good news
“This morning, I was told the good news by the NITI Aayog that our doubling rate (number of days taken to double the number of positive cases) is now 14.5 days, which means we are going in the right direction. We are following the Centre’s discharge policy strictly,” Mr. Chahal said. When he took charge a week ago, the city’s doubling rate was around 10 days.
The State will now be taking over every ICU bed in the city and 80% of general beds, including those in private hospitals. “We are very thankful to private hospitals since they agreed to come on board. There is another meeting on Monday and we are hopeful of getting 100% ICU beds and 80% general beds. We are making an 800-bed facility operational at MMRDA grounds from Tuesday or Wednesday, a dean has been appointed. We will have one lakh beds soon. The objective is that beds should be surplus to patients,” Mr. Chahal said.
New policy for zones
BMC recently changed its policy related to containment zones. Mr. Chahal has now ordered contiguous areas in one suburb to be a containment zone instead of small pockets. This will prevent movement of people and make the zone more watertight. However, of the 2,801 containment zones in the city earlier, it was found that around 1,500 buildings had single cases. BMC has now created a nomenclature for such buildings, calling them ‘sealed buildings.’ After these buildings were separated from zones, there are now 661 containment zones in the city.
“There were 1,500 buildings which had a single case and for those, we had to station two policemen there. Instead, we have pulled out those 3,000 policemen and deployed them in slums. It will now be the housing society’s responsibility to maintain these zones and prevent in and out movement. The BMC will help the society with disinfection and provide health services to it,” Mr. Chahal said. The BMC has also drafted an SOP for these buildings.
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Besides this, the civic body has increased the number of ambulances from 80 to 350. About 100 more doctors from Ambejogai and Latur will be joining the city’s fight against COVID-19. “We have enough doctors. Our problem is the availability of other staff in municipal hospitals. Staffers come from far away. We are trying to see if limited number of trains can be run only for essential staffers. This will bring current 40% attendance of lower level staff to 100%,” Mr. Chahal said.
