MUMBAI: The
BMC
will acquire rooms in four-star and five-star hotels and shift “substantially recovered” Covid-19 patients there so that beds can be freed in overburdened hospitals for critical patients.
Patients moved to these newly created
Covid Care Centres
in hotels will be managed by doctors and staff from
major private hospitals
and their medical parameters will be constantly monitored, assured civic officials. According to the BMC, patients will have to bear the cost of the hotel room and food.
“A few hotels in south Mumbai and near the city airport have come forward for this initiative. We will soon make a list of Covid hotels,” said a senior civic official.
Coronavirus: Live updatesMunicipal commissioner
Iqbal Chahal
announced on Monday, “Certain four- and five- star hotels shall be requisitioned immediately to create CCC2 (
Covid Care Centre
for positive patients) to be dovetailed and run by professionals from major private hospitals to make large number of beds available to new needy patients by shifting substantially recovered patients quickly to these CCC2 facilities to be managed by professional doctors.”
Over the last few weeks, due to a record surge in Covid-19 cases, a severe shortage of beds, especially in private hospitals, has been reported in the city. Civic officials believe that since many patients are from high-rise buildings, beds in private hospitals are preferred more, which led to the shortage.
“The BMC has added 325 ICU beds in various hospitals, taking the total to 2,466. The total number of Covid beds on the online bed allotment dashboard has increased to 19,151 in 141 hospitals of which presently 3,777 beds are vacant,” said Chahal.
“The BMC will operationalise 1,100 additional Covid beds, including 125 ICU beds, in the next seven days. In addition, the state government has decided to build three more jumbo field hospitals in five to six weeks at three locations each with a capacity of 2,000 beds with 200 ICU beds and 70% oxygenated beds,” the municipal chief added.
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