Mumbai, India – Till the end of last month, 27-year-old Ashish Avhad had to field non-stop telephone calls from COVID patients seeking beds, ambulances and guidance on home isolation.
Avhad works as a telephone operator in one of the 24 COVID response “war rooms” in India’s financial capital Mumbai, home to more than 12.5 million people, in the western state of Maharashtra.
As the city was swept by a raging second wave of the virus and cases peaked in April, Avhad remembers handling more than 100 calls a day during his eight-hour shift.
“Every second call would be a distress call,” said Avhad, a civil engineer who became a telephone operator after losing his job in the pandemic.
Marking a significant achievement, the civic-run BYL Nair Charitable Hospital has just completed its 1025th safe delivery for a woman infected by Covid-19 - and may walk into record books, excited officials said.The first such delivery of an .
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Over the last few weeks the COVID-19 cases have seen a massive rise in Mumbai creating a crisis situation in the city. As the city continues to deal with the covid sitaution, the waiting period for hospital beds has gone up. Apart from ICU and ventilator beds, patients are also struggling to get oxygen beds. As per data from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), only 10 ventilators and 35 ICU beds are vacant as on April 20.
At present, 3,865 beds are available.
According to BMCâs dashboard, beds available are 3,685 out of of the total 21,169 beds. The available ICU beds are 35 out of 2,770 beds, followed by oxygenated beds available are 614 out of 9,960 beds and ventilator beds available are 10 out of1,410 beds, as of Tuesday.
UPDATED: April 5, 2021 18:52 IST
The doctors say they are facing academic loss while not getting to work in their specialised branches as they have been put on Covid duty since last year. (Image representative)
Resident doctors at Mumbai’s BYL Nair Hospital have threatened to go on mass leave from 4 pm on April 6 if their demands are not fulfilled.
They say they are facing academic loss while not getting to work in their specialised branches as they have been put on Covid duty since last year.
The doctors are demanding the hiring of nursing staff and equitable distribution of work among four Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Covid and non-Covid hospitals