The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has written to all the public and private hospitals reminding them that the allocation of COVID-19 beds will only be undertaken by the war rooms specially created for tackling the pandemic and not randomly allocate beds as per their purview.
With the recent surge in cases across the city, the civic body believes that specific ward war rooms are the most efficient way to tackle the management of beds and is thus reiterating that patients should not be directly admitted to the hospitals without the knowledge of the war rooms. It is now going to enforce that all the beds are allocated only through the war rooms.
The BMC war rooms will get the list of people who have tested positive and will get in touch with the patients. First, the patients will be sent to the the local nursing homes. After those beds are exhausted, beds in ESIS hospitals, followed by private hospitals in the vicinity, jumbo centers, five government hospitals, and the 32 MCGM hospitals will be allocated for use.
Within Mumbai, according to the information available on the BMC dashboard, about 4,239 of the 16,237 non- ICU beds, 448 of the 1,709 ICU beds, 2,174 of the 8,694 of the oxygen beds, and 226 of the 1,036 ventilator beds are currently lying vacant. Almost 74% of the beds in the city are occupied. The BMC currently has 5 hospitals run by the state government, 32 hospitals run by the BMC, and 46 private hospitals. It further plans to operationalise another 69 private hospitals and nursing homes.
| Type of hospital | Total Facilities | Total COVID-19 Beds as of 25.03.2021 |
| Run by the State government | 5 | 697 |
| Run by the BMC | 32 | 9397 |
| Private hospitals | 46 | 3218 |
| Private hospitals to be operationalised | 69 | 2269 |
Private hospitals are expected to reserve 80% of their COVID-19 beds and 100% of their ICU beds for the ward war rooms. The hospitals cannot directly admit any patients on these reserved beds. They are also expected to designate a nodal officer who shall work in tandem with the municipal body. These nodal officers will comply with the different applications and formats that will be put forth by the BMC.
The Maharashtra state government had not only capped COVID-19 costs at private hospitals, but also demanded private hospitals to allocate beds to be controlled by the civic bodies in June 2020. The BMC intends to continue the same costing as well as gain more control over admissions.
According to the civic body, hospitals have to ensure that there is adequate oxygen supply, medicines as well as PPE kits for tackling the current outbreak wherein the city is reporting more than 5,000 cases daily for the last seven days. All public and private hospitals are expected to take an account of their current stock and place their orders whenever they feel that their stocks are depleting.
Along with now taking charge of the beds, the BMC is also requesting hospitals to discharge any people who asymptomatic and without any co-morbidities as they may not require hospitalisation. The hospitals are also expected to follow the discharge strategy released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Patients with mild symptoms are expected to be discharged within ten days if their symptoms have subsided.
Assistant Municipal Commissioners of each ward will assume responsibility of ensuring that the bed allocation is carried out smoothly. The numbers of each war room are attached in the image below.