Today afternoon Iqbal Singh Chahal, BMC Commissioner had a virtual conversation with Sahil Joshi from Mumbai Tak, discussing the number of cases and death rate in Mumbai and other covid 2019 related happenings. The number of cases in Mumbai as of today stands at around 32000 approximately and everyday the cases increase by 1200-1500. Iqbal Singh Chahal said that out of 32000 cases only 23000 are active cases and 15000 have been discharged today. As it the cases were expected to reach 40,000 as soon as I joined I made sure to make arrangement of 44,000 beds. And by 31 st may the active cases won’t cross 27,000. Speaking about the mortality rate and problems related with overflooding of hospitals and people not getting treated on time and passing away due to it he said that we have 33 big hospitals in Mumbai like Breach Candy, Nanavati, Lilavati and Bombay Hospital. We held a meeting with them and appealed them whatever ICUs and beds they have in this time to hand over to us. And they cooperated with us for which I’m really grateful. We have even constructed a open to sky hospital in BKC which consists of 1000 beds has started too. Apart from that to fulfil the scarcity of doctors we have requested the retired doctors, private sectors doctors, army, navy, airforce doctors and even nurses to come ahead and help us in these hard times. In response to this around 3000 doctors and nurses have written to us saying that they are ready to work. Apart from this the MBBS interns who are done with their final year and were getting paid only 11,000 rupees for their internship, we have told them that if they come and do covid duty we will pay them 50,000 rupees. Talking about the death rate he said today our death rate is 3.2 percent and very soon it will come down because we have formed an online system for dialysis. The BMC has started this online portal so that doctors can find slots for patients who have tested positive. There are 84 dialysis machines in Mumbai for COVID-19 positive patients and six machines for suspected patients. The portal will help doctors find where can a positive or suspected person be directed for dialysis. The BMC claimed that the system has helped doctors find slots for 30 patients in the last three days. The system will ensure 600 patients and 100 suspected patients are allotted slots
Surjitt sahani
