Only one floor, not entire building will be sealed if positive case found, says civic body
What social distancing? Kurla residents queue up at a grocery store. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
Maharashtra crossed the 35,000 mark of positive COVID-19 cases on Monday with Mumbai recording 1,185 new cases. Making yet another amendment in its guidelines, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) revised a protocol that mentions if a positive case is reported from a building, the entire premises won't be sealed, but just the floor where the positive patient resides.
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Earlier, the entire building used to be disinfected and all residents were home-quarantined for 14 days. However, the revised guidelines also states that a symptomatic positive patient has to be shifted to a facility where medical help is available while an asymptomatic person can be home-quarantined.
Vegetable vendors at Akurli road, Kandivali on Monday. Pic/Satej Shinde
State health department officials said Maharashtra recorded a total of 51 COVID deaths on Monday, of which 24 were in the city. Eight deaths were reported in Navi Mumbai, eight in Pune, three in Jalgaon, two each in Aurangabad, Ahmednagar and Nagpur and one each in Bhiwandi and Palghar. Officials said that 21 of the deceased were senior citizens and 35 were suffering from high-risk ailments like diabetes, hypertension and heart diseases. The state recorded more than 2,000 cases on Monday and the death toll has reached 1,249.
Meanwhile, work on the COVID care centre in BKC, worth R20 crore, has been completed. The MMRDA handed it over to the BMC on Monday. Civic officials said that the centre would be functional in a day or two. "The facility will be run by a team of doctors and will be headed by Dr Rajesh Dere from Sion Hospital. We need a day or two to deep clean the centre after which patients can be admitted," said a senior civic official.
Apart from the BKC centre, which will have a capacity of 1,000 beds, the city's largest COVID care centre is coming up at the NESCO exhibition grounds in Goregaon, which will have a capacity of 2,000 beds. Deputy municipal commissioner Ranjit Dhakane said the centre would start with 1,250 beds and the services would be scaled up based on requirement.
"The infrastructural work is complete and nursing staff have been appointed. Some work on the oxygen line is underway and we are also setting up 50 ICU beds at the centre. The facility should start functioning later this week," he said.
Meanwhile, the number of COVID-19 cases in Dharavi increased by 85 on Monday. Containment areas like Matunga Labour Camp had 18 new cases, which include a seven-year-old girl.
Eight new cases from 90 Feet Road and five cases from Kumbharwada among many other areas have taken the total count in the locality to 1,327. Mahim has recorded 28 new cases while Dadar had 14, including three from Borkarwadi.
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