Mumbai: 96,000 COVID-19 cases in March, bed crunch begins

Visitors at Gateway of India get tested for COVID-19 on Friday. Pics/Suresh Karkera

In a month during which the city broke all records, over 96,000 COVID-19 cases were recorded by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in March, up from just 17,000 in February. The exponential rise has led to a shortage of beds to treat COVID-19 patients. Just like last year, the BMC is going to increase the number of beds in its major and peripheral hospitals and claims that it has asked five private hospitals to operate mainly as COVID hospitals.

Officials check negative test reports of people arriving from Alibaug at Gateway of India on Friday

According to the data of available beds displayed on the BMC dashboard, 3,000 odd beds are vacant. Sources in the health department indicated that the civic beds will soon be filled to capacity as there are over 9,000 symptomatic patients currently. The BMC needs another 7,000 to 8,000 beds to accommodate the growing number of patients. Even ICU and ventilator beds are filling up fast and hardly 200 of each are available for critical patients.

Last year, a large number of patients had been admitted to private hospitals, with many accepting only COVID patients. The BMC plans to deploy the same strategy, especially because currently, most cases are coming from buildings and many people want to be treated at private hospitals. The civic body is activating additional beds at KEM, Sion, Nair and Cooper hospitals and also increasing the number of beds in peripheral hospitals, which should reflect in its list of available beds in the coming week, officials said.

A citizen of Denmark gets tested for COVID-19 at the Gateway of India on Friday

Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani said, "Yes, there will be a crunch for beds. For better management, we have allowed admissions to be done only through BMC so that there is no problem for people to get admitted. We have enough resources available for those suspected to have COVID and for high-risk contacts. Meanwhile, we are focusing on increasing our bed capacity and we will be activating additional beds at jumbo centres, and increasing the beds at private and civic-run hospitals. We have also approached five odd private hospitals to function as exclusive COVID hospitals."

March saw a total of 96,950 cases while February had seen 17,473 cases. While the doubling on February 1 was 564 days, on March 1 it was 244 and on April 1 it worsened to 49 days.

17,473
No. of cases recorded in Feb