Mumbai has passed the grim number of 50,000 cases this week amid worrying statistics for India’s financial capital.
The public health-care system in Mumbai, epicenter of India?s worsening coronavirus outbreak, is overwhelmed as Covid-19 patients pour in and hospital staff work around the clock. Medical care for non-coronavirus patients has basically been shut off due to a lack of resources.
Despite a strict two-month-long?lockdown, the outbreak in India?s financial capital has snowballed, with the city now accounting for nearly a quarter of India?s more than 4,700 deaths and more a fifth of India?s over 165,000 infections. The pandemic?s center is shifting away from New York and Europe to nations like Brazil and India, where under-funded health care infrastructure and poor living conditions provide fertile ground for the virus. India?s virus death toll?overtook?China?s on Thursday.
There was a shortage of beds for Intensive Care Units, or ICUs, and critical care initially when the pandemic broke out but it has largely been mitigated now, according to Sanjay Oak, a physician heading Mumbai?s virus task force set up in April by the government of Maharashtra ? the state where Mumbai is located.
The state government has taken over 80% of general category beds and all the ICU beds in the city?s private health care facilities, Oak said in an email. These beds ?are displayed and alloted through a common dash board? at an affordable price, he said.
The chaotic situation has also exposed the consequences of the social inequality that divides and defines Mumbai, where globe-trotting executives live in condominiums next to slums where their drivers, cooks and house cleaners reside.
The city?s deep-seated issues make it the perfect breeding ground for the highly-contagious pathogen, blunting the government?s efforts. It also houses Dharavi, Asia?s most-crowded slum, where as many as eight people may be staying in a 100-square-feet tin hutment and 80 sharing a public toilet.
Stigma has complicated contact tracing and social distancing efforts especially in slum clusters with health care workers being obstructed and cops being pelted with stones.
Local authorities have been aggressively ramping up facilities, readying as many as 100,000 beds by creating quarantine facilities everywhere from a race course to a planetarium and a nature park. A new 1,000 bed Covid-19 hospital was built from scratch within two weeks and started last week.
The local public health officials also?sent notices?to 75,000 private sector doctors to be ready for a two-week mandatory virus duty to rest the extremely fatigued and overworked public sector health care workers.
?The health care system will soon be placed in a very difficult situation where they have to make a choice between who to provide care to and who to simply say, ?sorry, we can?t do anything for you?,? said Vivekanand Jha, executive director of the George Institute of Global Health in India.
For doctors and nurses at the frontlines, challenges mount.
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