India’s Mumbai city to build 1,000-bed makeshift hospital for Covid-19 patients

A makeshift 1,000-bed hospital will be built in Bandra-Kurla Complex of Mumbai, the commercial capital of India.

The Wuhan-style hospital is being built within a fortnight by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).

An MMRDA official told news agency IANS: “The work on the hospital started on April 28. It will be ready within a fortnight as a major isolation facility for non-critical Covid-19 cases.”

The BKC ground is used for political rallies, exhibitions, and cultural-social events.

Maharashtra Urban Development Minister Eknath Shinde, who visited the BKC ground to monitor the progress, said:  “The 1,000-bed hospital is coming up on the lines of the hospital in Wuhan.”

The MMRDA had tweeted: “…. started construction of 1,000 beds quarantine and isolation facility for COVID-19 at BKC exhibition ground. It will add additional facility up to 5,000 beds if there is a requirement in future.”

The new hospital will feature a pathological laboratory, oxygen facilities, cabins for doctors and nurses, among other facilities.

In January, China quickly constructed a 1,000-bed hospital in Wuhan in ten days to treat patients infected with coronavirus.

In March, India’s two major hospital chains, Apollo Hospitals Group and Max Healthcare offered to the government to transform one of their hospitals into Covid-only centres in order to stop the “cohorting” of Covid-19 patients with non-Covid-19 patients.

This move came in response to a government call to private hospitals for opening up their facilities to treat Covid-19 patients as the government-run facilities alone are not enough.