Mumbai prepares for virus peak with beds in parks

Bloomberg

Mumbai, India’s financial hub and the epicenter of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak, is converting several of its iconic structures into quarantine facilities as it races to prepare for a predicted peaking of infections this month.
From a new hospital being built just a short stroll away from the US Consulate building and the India offices of Citigroup Inc to quarantine centres being set up in a nature park and planetarium, the metropolis is readying 100,000 beds, or little under five times the current number of positive diagnoses.
The goal is to be able to treat and isolate at least 75,000 cases, a projection based on last month’s data when cases were doubling almost every week, said Ashwini Bhide, additional commissioner at Mumbai’s municipal corporation.
The pace has since slowed amid the world’s strictest lockdown and, “while we are unlikely to touch those projections by the end of May, we continue to plan for the worst case scenario,” she added.
Mumbai’s race against time spotlights the challenges for the densely populated Asian nation, which has failed to flatten its virus curve despite the harsh shelter-at-home restrictions. Home to globe-trotting executives and poor migrant laborers living in tiny slum shanties, Mumbai, like New York city, is fertile ground for the highly infectious pathogen.
“We had some scary projections for virus infections and deaths in Mumbai city and the state, had the lockdown not been announced,” Uddhav Thackeray, chief minister of the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, said in a televised speech Monday. “While we have not been able to break the chain of infection, we have definitely put a break on the speed at which the infections are increasing.”
A Twitter video earlier this month showed a hospital ward allegedly in Mumbai’s Lokmanya Tilak Hospital where corpses of virus victims tied in black plastic sheets were left on beds next to infected patients. The hospital formed a committee to probe the incident and later replaced its dean, the Times of India reported. Mumbai’s newly added facilities aim to ease the strain on resources.
This patch of land in the heart of the city has developed into a financial hotspot, comparable with London’s Canary Wharf. It houses the headquarters of several global investment banks as well as the country’s capital markets regulator, posh restaurants and five-star hotels.
Over the past weekend, it started operating a 1,000 bed non-critical Covid hospital, that can be scaled up to 5,000 beds. Soon it will have another 1,000 bed intensive care unit stocked with ventilators and other critical equipment.
The hospital was built in less than a fortnight and can weather Mumbai’s heavy monsoon rainfall, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority Commissioner RA
Rajeev said.
Built in 1950 soon after India gained independence, the iconic heritage structure and its dome-shaped auditorium have held TEDX talks, Broadway-like musicals and music concerts.
Its dome is now a 600-bed quarantine plus observation facility with 30 Intensive Care Unit portable beds.
Built in 1883, this sea-facing race course hosted 2020’s Indian Derby in February, just days after India reported its first coronavirus infection. Located in one of Mumbai’s most upscale neighborhoods, its parking lot is now a 300-bed isolation centre created using tent hanger structures and vast canopies typically constructed to maintain aircraft.