To combat the third wave of COVID-19, health facilities at hospitals run by the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) are being upgraded.
Thane Guardian Minister Eknath Shinde on Thursday inaugurated the city’s first pressure swing adsorption (PSA) plant at Vashi General Hospital, and a HRCT scanning facility at CIDCO exhibition centre. Officials say the civic body is the first to have got a HRCT facility installed at a COVID-19 centre.
Municipal Commissioner Abhijit Bangar said during the second wave of the pandemic, around 1,100 patients were treated at the CIDCO centre and every time they needed a scan, they had to be taken to private hospitals. “Hence, the corporation decided to have its own HRCT machine by collecting ₹1.85 crore through CSR activities of corporates,” he said.
The machine can conduct 400 scans per day which otherwise costs ₹4,000 per scan in private hospitals.
The PSA plant, which is first of the five planned by the civic body, has a capacity to generate 1.84 metric tonnes of oxygen per day. The cost of the project is ₹1.50 crore. For the third wave, corporation officials say, around 50 metric tonnes of oxygen per day might be needed.
