MUMBAI: Packed morgues, bodies in wards, patients forced to share beds and medical workers run ragged: Mumbai's war against coronavirus has pushed the Indian city's hospitals to breaking point.
The state-run Sion hospital has become a byword for the stunning failure of Mumbai - home to billionaires, Bollywood and slums - to cope with the pandemic.A video widely shared on social media and shown on Indian TV showed corpses wrapped in black plastic left on beds in a ward where patients are being treated.With space at a premium, and relatives too afraid or unable to claim their dead because they are themselves in quarantine, disposal of coronavirus corpses is not easy, doctors say.
"In March there were just one or two suspected cases a day. It all seemed to be under control. Then the situation drastically changed," the 25-year-old said."We were seeing 50-100 patients a day, 80 per cent of whom would turn out to be positive and many would need to be on oxygen," he said. Intensive care specialist Deepak Baid, who runs a private hospital in north Mumbai, volunteered to help at a state-run medical facility, Rajawadi Hospital.But though it is only equipped to handle patients with moderate symptoms, doctors there routinely end up treating critically ill people, Baid said.
"We are expanding capacity all the time," she told AFP, pointing to efforts to build a 1,000-bed field hospital in a commercial hub.
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