Mumbai’s civic body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, on Friday said that 96% of Covid-19 patients in the city’s hospitals who need oxygen support are unvaccinated, reported The Times of India.
“Ninety-six percent of the patients who are admitted on oxygen beds in 186 hospitals of Mumbai are unvaccinated,” said the civic body’s chief commissioner Iqbal Chahal. “Otherwise, we have seen so far that vaccinated people are not reaching ICUs.”
Mumbai has 22,222 active beds for Covid-19 patients, including oxygen, intensive care unit and ventilator beds, in private and public hospitals, reported the Hindustan Times. Of the 11,912 oxygen beds, only 16.6%, or 1,983 beds, were occupied till Wednesday.
This roughly puts the number of unvaccinated Covid-19 patients on oxygen beds to 1,903.
The age group and co-morbidity status of these patients is not yet known. However, doctors have said that the age group of such patients is above 40 years, according to the Hindustan Times.
The city also has 2,636 ICU beds. Of this, 671 are occupied, as of Wednesday. As many as 421 of the 1,407 ventilator beds are also occupied. However, the vaccination status of these patients was not clear.
The civic body has administered both the doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to over one crore people in the city while about 90 lakh have received the first shot, according to The Times of India.
On Friday, Chahal said that the oxygen consumption was only 10 tonnes, and its production capacity 200 tonnes per day. He said that there are was 400 tonnes of oxygen stored separately.
“In the third wave, we have to understand that positivity rate or cases will not be parameter with which to gauge the situation but hospitalisation rate,” he said. “The occupation of oxygen and ICU beds along with the overall bed occupancy rate is to be gauged.”
The civic body chief said that 80% of the the coronavirus beds in Mumbai were unoccupied and the situation will be reviewed if the occupancy touches 50% in the coming days.
“Our experts from the Covid task force have told me that in Mumbai [infections] may even go up to say 40,000 cases daily,” he added. “This may or may not happen but we will come out comfortably out of this considering the cooperation from citizens.”
Mumbai is among the cities where India’s third wave of Covid-19 first became noticeable.
On Friday, Mumbai reported 20,971 new Covid-19 cases and six deaths due to the disease in the past 24 hours. Out of the new infections, 84% persons are asymptomatic. A total of 1,395 patients were admitted to hospitals on Thursday, of whom 88 needed oxygen support.
The city currently has 91,731 active coronavirus cases.
Between December 15 and January 4, municipal data showed the number of Covid patients hospitalised in Mumbai rose five times from 916 to 4,491, those admitted to intensive care units doubled from 254 to 507 and those requiring oxygen support rose from 384 to 1,374.
While the daily infections in Mumbai have increased rapidly since December 15, the increase in hospitalisation has been slower and admission to intensive care units even slower.
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