BBMP scales down Covid Care Centres as new cases fall

The BBMP will scale down the medical infrastructure it had created to battle the second wave of Covid-19, citing a drop in daily cases.

"We are seeing a drop in the number of cases. Hospital admissions have also come down drastically. On average, only 30 people are admitted to hospitals and Covid Care Centres (CCCs) daily. Hence, we have decided to scale down the facilities," said Gaurav Gupta, Chief Commissioner, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike.

The civic body has shut down over 50 CCCs and triage centres. "We had set up 60 CCCs and triage centres across the city, out of which 30 had more than 10 beds. Overall, we had a capacity of nearly 3,000 beds. Now, we are looking at keeping only eight CCCs operational with an overall capacity of 300 beds," Gupta said.

He maintained that the infrastructure wasn't being dismantled and could be activated in two days. "We will be alert for the next three months. We won’t dismantle the CCCs and will make sure they are available as and when the need arises," he said.

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The number of hospital beds has also been reduced and the BBMP has returned the beds acquired from private hospitals.

"The number of beds has been reduced to 5,000 from 13,000. Discussions are going on to further cut the number down to 1,800."

As of July 15, the BBMP had 6,446 hospital beds available under the government quota, out of which only 350 are occupied.

However, of the 350, only 92 patients had opted for general beds as the demand for high-dependency unit (HDU) and intensive care units (ICU) beds has continued with 103 HDU beds occupied and 153 ICU admissions.