Third central team to visit Mumbai – Mumbai Mirror

A third high-level multidisciplinary team from the Centre will soon visit Mumbai to help draw up a strategy in curbing the spread of Covid-19.

Central teams are being sent to more than 50 districts/municipalities with high cases, including seven in Maharashtra. They will assist state governments by providing technical support in managing the pandemic, said the Union ministry of health and family welfare on Tuesday.

Each team comprises two public health experts/epidemiologists/clinicians and a senior joint secretary-level nodal officer for administrative guidance. It will visit healthcare facilities and help address some of the challenges such as testing bottlenecks, low tests per million population, high confirmation rates, high testing confirmation rate, risk of capacity shortfall over the next two months, potential bed shortage, growing fatality rate, high doubling rate and sudden spike in active cases.

Many districts and civic bodies have already set up dedicated core teams at the district level to coordinate with the central teams on a regular basis.

The Centre had rushed high-level teams to Mumbai in April and May, as the city’s tally continued to shoot up. During the first visit in April, the team had warned the BMC that its one-size-fits-all strategy would not work in slums and had recommended institutional quarantine for nearly 5,000 of Dharavi’s residents.