Mumbai's jumbo hospitals to work as Covid-19 vaccination centres

MUMBAI: The jumbo Covid-19 care centres set up in Mumbai after the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak will now be transformed into mega-vaccination centres by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, officials said here on Monday.
"We shall convert the Covid-19 jumbo field hospitals now into vaccination centres for public benefit," said BMC additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani who earlier inspected the sprawling facilities, designed on the lines of the Wuhan field hospitals.
In the initial stages, the BMC plans to conduct vaccination drives at its four big hospitals - King Edward Memorial at Parel, B Y L Nair in Mumbai Central, R N Cooper at Vile Parle and Lokmanya Tilak at Sion, which are equipped to vaccinate 2,000 persons daily each.
Besides, 1,000 each shall be vaccinated daily at the periphery hospitals like Bhabha in Bandra, V.N. Desai in Santacruz, Rajawadi in Ghatkopar and Dr B R Ambedkar in Kandivali.
This would take care of a total of 12,000 vaccinations daily covering the priority groups like health workers, police, security, and other frontline workers, etc, and the rest are proposed to be vaccinated at the jumbo Covid-19 centres.
The mega-facilities are at the NSCI in Worli, R&D Complex at Byculla, BKC, NESCO in Goregaon and one each in Dahisar and Mulund, which are currently lying virtually vacant owing to the steep decline in cases in Mumbai in the past couple of months.
"While a section of these jumbo setups shall continue to be used as field hospitals, the excess areas would be devoted as vaccination centres. We shall make separate entry/exit points so that the persons going in for vaccination do not come in contact with the patients," Kakani said.
Civic officials hinted that the plan is to ensure around 50,000 persons getting vaccinated daily in Mumbai, which ranks highest in the country in terms of Covid-19 fatalities besides Pune which tops the list in terms total cases.
In the subsequent phases, the BMC plans to cover over five million people - nearly one-third of the city's population - including people aged above 50 and those having co-morbidities.
In preparation for the upcoming vaccination drives, Maharashtra conducted full-fledged 'dry runs' of vaccination drives in Jalna, Nandurbar, Pune and Nagpur on Saturday.