BENGALURU: With the number of fresh Covid-19 cases decreasing, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has decided to reduce the number of government quota beds to treat Covid patients to about 1,800.
Gaurav Gupta, BBMP chief commissioner, told reporters: “Every day over the past few weeks, less than 30 positive patients are being referred to hospitals for admission by BBMP doctors. Since the overall number of cases too have come down, we are going to reduce government quota beds. As we speak, we will reserve 1,800 beds. We will modify this number as and when required.”
The BBMP portal reveals 95% of the 6,446 beds reserved for Covid-19 patients were vacant at 4.30pm on Thursday. The current plan is to reduce those beds by nearly three-fourths. The proposed 1,800 beds will include those in both government and private hospitals.
Gupta also said some Covid Care Centres in Bengaluru have been shut down as they were seeing very few admissions, but the infrastructure is being retained ahead of an anticipated third wave of infections.
As on Wednesday, Bengaluru city had about 12,573 active Covid-19 cases and, over the past week, the test positivity rate has dropped to 0.7%. Eight weeks ago (between May 19 and 25), the positivity rate in the city stood at about 15.7%.
Incidentally, the BBMP Covid bulletin showed, the number of Covid-19 vaccine doses administered on Wednesday was a mere 36,503 – the lowest in 10 days.
