With Covid-19 cases continuing to spiral upwards and public and private hospitals running to full capacity, the BMC has appointed nodal officers in all 24 ward war rooms and jumbo field hospitals with SOPs. These nodal officers will proactively work to streamline allocation of beds for accurate functioning of these ward war rooms with immediate effect, especially between 11 pm to 7 am.
 
These nodal officers shall function in two shifts from 3 pm to 11 pm and 11 pm to 7 am both at ward war rooms and jumbo field hospitals.
 
The nodal officers for ward war rooms and seven jumbo field hospitals will be constantly in touch with each other to facilitate allotment of beds to patients requiring beds and calling up the ward war rooms especially between 11 pm and 7 am.
 
All bed allotments between 11 pm and 7 am shall be predominantly done in jumbo field hospitals only and fast-track bed allotment shall be ensured throughout the night by these nodal officers at ward war rooms and jumbo field hospitals respectively.
 
Any patient calling the ward war room for Covid bed between 11 pm and 7 am shall be referred to a particular jumbo field hospital and on arrival at a particular jumbo hospital suitable bed will be allotted to the patient after assessing his medical condition. This shall ensure that all needy patients are allotted beds on fast track between 11 pm and 7 am besides the normal functioning of ward war rooms during daytime.
 
All patients calling up the ward war rooms between 11 pm and 7 am whose Covid report may not have arrived or whose Covid test is yet to be done will also be entitled for allotment of beds in jumbo field hospitals in the suspected category of beds and on arrival at these jumbo hospitals they will be put on suspected category of bed stabilized with oxygen facility, etc. after which Covid test shall be conducted to save precious human lives in this category.
 
The line list of positive reports being received by MCGM at 23:59 hours every day will be supplemented with another line list which shall be submitted by all testing labs at 6 am in the morning to MCGM to ensure that all patients tested on previous day shall start getting calls from ward war rooms immediately on the subsequent day from 8 am onwards.
 
As of now for the swabs collected before 2 pm on a particular day, the positive reports were coming at 23:59 hours on the same night and for swabs collected after 2 pm on a particular day, the positive reports were coming on the next day at 23:59 hours. The new system put in place for obtaining a second line list of Covid positive report at 6 am from the labs shall cut short allotment period of beds to the needy Covid positive patients by 24 hours.
 
All labs have been instructed to ensure a turn around time of 24 hours without fail. The labs have been instructed to give priority to swabs of symptomatic patients while processing the covid test collected under home collection of swabs.
 
Certain 4- and 5-star hotels have been requisitioned immediately to create CCC2 (covid care centre for positive patients) to be dovetailed and run by professionals from major private hospitals so as to make large number of beds available to new needy patients by shifting substantially recovered patients quickly to these CCC2 facilities to be managed by professional doctors.
 
The MCGM (BMC) has also said that it  has added 325 additional ICU beds in various hospitals in Mumbai and now the number of ICU beds  has gone up to 2466.
 
Total number of covid beds on online bed allotment dashboard has increased to 19151 consisting of 141 hospitals out of which presently 3777 DCHC/DCH beds are vacant.
 
The MCGM will operationalise 1100 additional DCHC/DCH covid beds including 125 ICUs in next 7 days.
 
Besides the above, the goverment is setting up three additional jumbo field hospitals within the next five-six weeks at three different locations in Mumbai, each having a capacity of 2,000 beds and 200 ICU beds and 70% oxygenated beds.
 
As many as 244 hotels have been activated as quarantine facilities which include 29 five-star hotels, 34 four-star hotels, 56 three-star hotels, 38 two-star hotels, 86 budget hotels and one airport hotel. Incoming passengers from abroad will be shifted to these quarantine centres for safety reasons. Covid-19 patients who do not want to stay at home for safety of their family members can also move into these hotels. The per-day price range of quarantine centres in these hotels will vary between Rs 3,500 and Rs 4,500 in five-star hotels, Rs 2,500 to Rs 4,000 in four-star hotels, Rs 1,800 to Rs 3,750 in three-star hotels, Rs 1,750 to Rs 3,250 in two-star hotels and Rs 1,200 to Rs 3,000 in budget hotels. The cost of using these facilities will be borne by the incoming passengers and positive patients.