War rooms, field hospitals helped Mumbai in battling second wave of Covid-19: Officials

A system of wardlevel war rooms where hospital beds are allocated by civic officials and the decision not to dismantle field hospitals were key to Mumbais success in tackling the second wave of Covid19 pandemic officials believe As much of the country is reeling under an unprecedented surge in cases the Mumbai model has drawn appreciation even from the Supreme CourtSince May 1 Mumbai is reporting less than 4000 cases every day a significant fall from over 8500 cases a day in the first week of April On April 4 the city logged 11163 cases the highest so far On May 6 it recorded 3056 casesTo be sure the financial capital of the country is still reporting more cases daily than the peak of 2848 cases recorded on October 7 during the first wave last year But there is no shortage of hospital beds and oxygen for patients civic officials claimedOn Wednesday the Supreme Court lauded the efforts of authorities to ensure adequate oxygen supply in Mumbai Bombay Municipal Corporation is doing some great work with no disrespect to Delhi What they are doing how they are managing we can learn from themI also understand that Maharashtra also produces oxygen which Delhi cannot do said a bench headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud hearing pleas on the dire situation in Delhi As the second wave began the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation focused on testing contact tracing and treatment besides ensuring that people followed guidelinesBut the decision not to take down the infrastructure put in place during the first wave proved to be more crucial There would have been chaos if we hadnt kept jumbo Covid19 centres field hospitals oxygen beds ICU beds ready before the start of second wave said Mayor Kishori PednekarAdditional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani who insisted that jumbo centres should not be dismantled till March 31 said the BMC was ready for a new surge The whole system oxygen catering house keeping doctors and nurses was in place at jumbo centres he saidThe civic body continued to augment availability of oxygen and ICU beds and medicine stocks he said This is why the BMC had sufficient stock of Remdesivir when everywhere there was a shortage Kakani saidThe number of beds was doubled from around 12000 to 24000 within a month when cases began to rise in February At present Mumbai has 31695 Covid19 beds including 12754 oxygen beds and 2929 ICU onesThere is no shortage of medical oxygen in the city now but there were some scary moments when on the night of April 1617 the BMC had to shift 168 Covid19 patients from six civic hospitals as oxygen supply ran outLearning a lesson it started monitoring the movement of oxygen cylinders from plants to hospitals in real time We have now deputed six officers at control rooms to ensure seamless supply of oxygen There is also a monitoring committee headed by a deputy commissioner Kakani addedDuring the first wave the BMC set up a war room in each of the 24 wards to guide patients Thanks to this system people are not needed to run from one hospital to another in search of beds as allocation of beds is done by war room officialsMunicipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal said during a recent interview to the Indian Express that war rooms dashboards for bed management prohibition of release of test report directly to patients and the decision not to dismantle jumbo Covid19 facilities proved usefulThe system is on auto pilot now he said When I joined we did not have a dashboard our control room operators used to check with individual hospitals if a bed is available he saidAfter the April 17 incident when oxygen in six hospitals ran out the BMC sought a protocol for oxygen consumption from the Maharashtra governments Covid19 task forceIt was decided that oxygen saturation level need not be maintained beyond 94 per cent highflow nasal oxygen should not be used indiscriminately and there should be an oxygen consumption audit Chahal said The protocol was conveyed to all 176 hospitals in the cityMayor Pednekar said the BMC also focused on setting up oxygen plants We didnt rely only on oxygen cylinders but we set up liquid oxygen plants Because of this not a single person died due to lack of oxygen she saidChief Minister Uddhav Thackerays decision to enforce fresh lockdownalso helped she noted The civic body has already started preparing for the possible third wave of the pandemic she saidThe number of jumbo Covid19 facilities will be increased from nine to 15 including dedicated facilities for children and the disabled Pednekar saidJumbo centres dashboard oxygen supply and all other things worked effectively Their effectiveness was visible in last threefour weeks This infrastructure needs to be maintained because one can not predict if Covid19 has run its course or not said Dr Om Shrivastava an infectious diseases expert who is a member of the state task forceThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its 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