Though the city has recorded a total of over 43,000 cases till now, only 2,348 patients with mostly mild to moderate symptoms are currently undergoing treatment at various COVID Care Centres
NMMC COVID Care Centre in Vashi
The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) plans to shut down nine of its COVID Care Centres as the number of active cases in the city is on the decline. The civic body had set up 14 centres to fight the pandemic. Though it has recorded a total of over 43,000 cases till now, only 2,348 patients with mostly mild to moderate symptoms are currently undergoing treatment at various centres. The NMMC also plans to shift its workforce to centres, which have patients so that they can focus more on treatment to reduce the mortality rate.
Out of the total 14 centres, four currently don't have any patients and five where patients are undergoing treatment have stopped admitting new ones. As far as the dedicated COVID centres are concerned, more than 50 per cent isolation beds with oxygen and 80 per cent beds without oxygen are available. Patients with severe to moderate symptoms are being shifted to hospitals rather than centres, where the medical staff have also been transferred.
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Civic officials conduct COVID checks at Kopar Khairane and Turbhe
Towards the beginning of the pandemic, the NMMC used to record hardly 25-30 cases daily. However, the cases started to increase from May onwards and by July the mortality rate had reached 3 per cent. But aggressive testing and tracing methods under 'Mission Break the Chain' helped the civic body fight the situation and 24 close contacts of positive patients were quarantined daily.
Commissioner Abhijeet Bangar introduced antigen tests and accelerated setting up of COVID-19 labs for enhancing RtPCR tests. Mobile testing vans were sent to housing complexes in containment zones and testing camps were held at societies. All of this started yielding results in September when the daily cases started to decrease.
A health worker collects swab sample of a cop for an antigen test at Panvel. File pics
An NMMC official said, "From September end, we started witnessing a decline in the active and daily cases. At the start of October the city had 3,654 active cases, which has reduced to 2,348. As the number of patients at the COVID centres is reducing, we have decided to close nine of them."
NMMC numbers (till October 25)
Total cases 43,626
Recovered 40,400
Deaths 878
Daily new cases of last week (average) 210
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