MUMBAI: In the first week of February, Dr Prince Surana was planning to reduce the number of Covid beds in his Chembur hospital from 60 to half. “But by the last week of February, our Covid ward was full. Our nine ventilators were occupied as well,” he said.
In BMC’s jumbo facilities too, the downscaling plans drawn up in February first week were discarded as cases started rising. Cases have risen four times between February 15 and now.
The second wave, as experts call the present surge, has however not had the same effect on hospital beds. “Beds are not available in the private sector where the number of beds was reduced, but public hospitals have enough vacant beds,” said a civic doctor. The civic dashboard says it too — only 53% of 12,694 Covid beds in the city were occupied as on Saturday.
This second wave in Maharashtra, as Dr Pradeep Awate who heads the epidemiology cell of the state public health department said, is milder but more transmissible.
The weekly case fatality rate for the state from February 15 to 21 was 0.7%, which declined to 0.32% in the last six days between March 15 and March 20. In the same period, the weekly cases have tripled.
The new cases reported in the week between February 15 and 21 were 36,606 and 259 fatalities were reported, while the state added 1.34 lakh from March 15 to 20 and 439 fatalities have been reported so far.
A senior doctor from a south Mumbai hospital said that the Covid graph in Maharashtra, especially Mumbai, is similar to the European wave albeit three to four months behind.