BMC to book hospitals remaining shut during lockdown

Mumbai, May 21 (IANS) Cracking the whip, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will soon register cases against those private hospitals, nursing homes and clinics which are remaining shut during the lockdown period, officials said here on Thursday.Many private healthcare institutions have not opened despite the BMC's clearance to clear the rush of patients and reduce the load on the public hospitals in the city during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.Though estimates are not available, hundreds of medium and small private hospitals, nursing homes and neighbourhood clinics continue to remain closed, forcing patients to approach government hospitals.The BMC has surveyed over 58,14,340 homes in the past few weeks as part of preventive measures to combat the spread of coronavirus, an official said.Around 10,000 teams have fanned out in slums and are surveying around 700,000 people daily to weed out Covid-19 suspect cases, as the city continues to record the highest number of patients and deaths in the past over two months.To date, 7,447 suspect cases have been referred to hospitals, 52,798 high-risk contacts have been identified of which 36,167 have been sent to quarantine.For senior citizens, a special survey is currently underway in which 10,25,062 houses have been covered to screen 168,678 elderly persons of which 1,279 with low levels of SpO2 (oxygen saturation) were referred for further treatment.
--IANS qn/prs