Mumbai municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal has directed all the hospitals in the city to report deaths due to COVID-19 within 48 hours, and set a deadline of June 29 for reporting earlier fatalities. Earlier this month, the BMC added 862 deaths, which had not been reported, to the pandemic’s toll in the country’s financial capital.
AIR correspondent reports that after a controversy over COVID-19 death figures in the city, BMC commissioner had directed all the hospitals on June 8 to report new deaths within 48 hours, but several hospitals were not following the directive.
The city civic body Commissioner held a meeting with hospital deans, medical experts and senior health department officials through video conference yesterday and warned of stringent action under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, if hospitals failed to comply on death reporting.
Besides, he also directed that hospitals should have at least one month’s stock of medicines needed to treat coronavirus patients, and procure medicines directly from manufacturing companies by following proper procedures.
