80%
OF ALL MUMBAI PATIENTS IN CIVIC/ GOVT HOSPITALS resolved soon. india today reached out to Dr Lahane, but he declined to comment, as did Amey Ghole, chairman of the BMC health committee.
The sorry conditions at Sion Hospital were again highlighted after assistant inspector of police Amol Kulkarni died of COVID-19 on May 15. Kulkarni, who was posted at the police station in Dharavi, a Covid hotspot, complained of difficulty in breathing on May 13. Sion Hospital advised him to home quarantine instead of admitting him. Two days later, he was found lying unconscious in his bathroom and since his family could not get an ambulance in time, he died on the way to the hospital. The report for his Covid test came after his death.
Like KEM, Sion Hospital, too, is taking non-Covid patients. Dr Avinash Saknure, president of the Sion unit of the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD), admits overcrowding of patients has resulted in chaos. “No doctor will want two patients on one bed, but you need to understand the situation,” Saknure told India Today TV. “Sometimes we have been admitting patients two and a half times over our capacity. Treating everyone is important.” The doctors, too, feel bad about the situation, but are helpless beyond a point. “We are on the brink of an emotional breakdown watching patients die. It’s difficult,” says Dr Rishabh Chheda, a resident at Sion Hospital. “We are facing a pandemic at a time when hospitals are not ready for it. There is a severe crunch of resources.”
Mumbai has been recording an average 1,200 Covid cases every day. On May 17, it recorded 1,595 cases, the largest one-day number so far. The Maharashtra government has maintained that 70 per cent cases are asymptomatic, 27 per cent symptomatic, and three per cent are critical. The state government has divided the health facilities into three categories— Covid care centres (CCC), dedicated Covid health centres (DCHC) and dedicated Covid hospitals (DCH)—depending on the severity of cases. The CCC is further divided into CCC1, to quarantine highrisk suspects, including those who cannot maintain physical distancing at home; and CCC2, for asymptomatic positive patients,