4,457 beds in medical colleges across the state

FOCUS SHIFTS TO OUTSIDE MUMBAI Nagpur and Aurangabad top the list

MUMBAI: With rising number of cases from districts outside Mumbai, the medical education department has increased the bed strength in all 19 government-run medical colleges across the state to 4,457 as of July 5, from around 2,000 as of May 1. Districts namely Nagpur and Aurangabad have the highest number of Covid-19 beds in medical colleges. Health activists, however, said the number is not enough.

On June 11, the state recorded over 1 lakh patients and crossed the 2-lakh mark in less than a month later on July 2. Till Sunday, Mumbai recorded a total of 84,524 Covid-19 patients, while the remaining 60% of the state’s total of 2,06,619 came from other districts. As cases have plateaued in Mumbai, the state is now focusing on Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Jalgaon, among others, which are recording a gradual surge.

The state medical education department has 19 medical colleges across 16 districts in the state—mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Nanded, Solapur, Akola, Aurangabad, Gondia, Jalgaon,sangli, Kolhapur, Dhule, Yavatmal, Beed, Latur and Chandrapur. Of the 4,557 beds, 741 are for patients in intensive care units (ICU), 385 with ventilator support and remaining 3,331 are oxygen-supported beds for moderately ill patients.

“We have observed that only 5% of the patients require a ventilator. Almost 80% of the patients with breathing difficulties recover with oxygen support. So, we have over 3,000 beds with oxygen facilities,” Sanjay Mukherjee, secretary of Medical Education and Drugs Department (MEDD). “On a daily basis, we try to expand the number of beds to accommodate more patients.”

Mumbai has 400 beds at government-run St George and GT hospitals that come under Grant Medical College (GMC), Mumbai, which is also called JJ Hospital. Pune has 266 beds in BJ Medical College and GMC in Baramati. At Nagpur, where cases have surged from 139 on May 1 to 1,719 till July 5, there are 1,124 beds at the Government

Medical College (GMC) and Indira Gandhi Medical College. Aurangabad, with 6,568 cases as of July 5, has 566 beds at the GMC. On May 1, Latur recorded only 12 cases which till July 5 surged to 425. To treat patients at the district, the Vilasrao Deshmukh Institute of Medical Science has set up 388 beds. The medical education has installed 285 beds at the Gmcmiraj in Sangli, where 315 Covid-19

cases have been recorded.

Since April, the medical education department has been setting up beds in all government colleges, even in districts like Beed, Chandrapur and Gondia which didn’t have any Covid-19 patients then.

“In May, the Central team criticised us for investing resources in districts which had minimal cases. But as we had kept the health infrastructure ready in our colleges, we could conduct tests and provide immediate treatment to migrants,” said a senior officer from Directorate of Medical Education (DMER). “It also helped control the fatality rate.”

Dr Abhijit More, co-convenor of NGO Jan Aarogya Abhiyan, said Jalgaon has only 205 beds, despite 4,000 cases and 278 deaths till Sunday. “Jalgaon district has turned out to be the epicentre for Covid-19, with a fatality rate of almost 6.5%. In districts like Latur and Beed, if the cases increase, the fatality rate might rise further, owing to other factors such as malnutrition,” said Dr More.