Mumbai’s jumbo field hospitals to be made vaccination centres as drive gains pace

The jumbo Covid care centres set up in Mumbai after the outbreak of the pandemic would be converted into mega vaccination centres.

The BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has already started giving final touches to the preparations ahead of the vaccination drive.

As per BMC’s plan, of eight centres, four major civic hospitals—King Edward Memorial (KEM) at Parel, BYL Nair in Mumbai Central, Dr RN Cooper at Vile Parle and Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital at Sion—have been equipped to vaccinate 2,000 people daily.

The remaining four centres—Bhabha Hospital (Bandra), VN Desai Hospital (Santacruz), Rajawadi Hospital (Ghatkopar) and Bharat Ratna Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Hospital (Kandivli) will vaccinate 1,000 people every day.

Read: Localised herd immunity, young population behind dip in India’s Covid count?

This plan would enable to vaccinate 12,000 people per day in the initial stages with doctors, health workers, police personnel.

Thereafter, big/jumbo facilities are located in the Dome of National Sports Club of India in Worli, Mahalaxmi Racecourse, Richardson & Cruddas complex in Byculla, Bandra-Kurla Complex, NESCO Complex in Goregaon and the suburbs in Dahisar and Mulund.

The overall preparations in Mumbai would ensure that nearly 50,000 people could be vaccinated in India’s financial capital per day.

“We will be converting the Covid jumbo field hospitals to vaccination centres,” BMC’s Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani said on Monday.

“While part of these jumbo centres would be used as field hospitals the rest of it would be vaccination centres. There would be separate entry/exit so that the person going in for vaccination does not come in contact with the patients,” he said.

During the first phase, over one lakh healthcare workers will be vaccinated, while in the second phase, police personnel and other frontline workers will be immunised.

And in the third phase, over 50 lakh citizens are expected to be vaccinated, including people above 50 years old and those with co-morbidities.