Mumbai: 89 per cent of Covid-19 beds now available

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had converted the NESCO exhibition hall into a Covid Care Centre, at Goregaon. File pic

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) seems to be in no mood to bring the city a level up in terms of relaxations even as the situation of bed availability seems to have massively improved. Mumbai's current bed availability stands at 89 per cent. There are a total of 24,194 beds across all facilities, which include Covid Care Centres, dedicated Covid health centres and dedicated Covid hospitals. Even the oxygenated bed occupancy is currently 16 per cent, way less than the eligible 25 per cent.

Recently, the civic body also decided that their newly constructed Jumbo Covid facilities might not be managed directly by civic staff and would be outsourced based on contracts. While currently over 19,958 beds are lying vacant across all facilities, few other jumbo centres that are under development will add to the number soon. The city currently has 8,114 active cases with about 3,716 asymptomatic, 3,667 symptomatic and 731 critical patients.

The city is also in a better position in terms of ICU beds as over 50 per cent of them are vacant. According to the civic body's Covid dashboard, the city has more than 2,450 ICU beds of which 1,269 are currently vacant. Even the ventilator beds are available in good numbers. Of the total 1,345 ventilator beds in the city, 593 are vacant.

Requesting anonymity, a civic official said, "With an increase in the number of beds, we also need additional manpower to manage the new cases that will be added in the city. Hence, we have decided to outsource the new jumbo centres. Apart from this, we will also increase the bed capacity as two jumbo centres are being developed. However, we are not looking at giving any further relaxations as there is fear of the third wave and the Delta variants of the virus."

1,269
No. of ICU beds available

593
No. of ventilator beds available