As demand for beds in private hospitals shot up over the weekend, the Brihanmumbai Municipal corporation added 2269 isolation beds, including 360 ICUs, in private hospitals for Covid-19 patients. As many as 69 nursing homes were taken over.
BMC Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal reiterated that no bed will be directly available for admission for patients in private hospitals. Private hospitals found directly admitting patients will be penalised. Civic officials said this is to ensure mildly symptomatic patients do not occupy hospital beds.
“All allotment of hospital beds shall be through 24 WARD WAR ROOMS only and therefore no one should try to procure positive covid report directly from Testing Labs. Otherwise, they will find it difficult to get bed anywhere,” Chahal said.
“Let the name come to us in our line list from labs at midnight and we will go to their homes with beds early next morning as we are doing since last June,” he added.
BMC further plans to operationalise 1500 beds in jumbo centers this week. Currently, there are 3000 vacant beds across Mumbai, including 450 beds in private hospitals, that are fast shrinking as Mumbai records 6000-7000 cases daily
Chahal has informed the state government that Mumbai may soon record 10000 cases a day.
