If hospitalisation is needed, patients are informed about the beds that are available in public as well as private hospitals. вЂњWe have adopted the strategy to вЂChase the VirusвЂ™ and our continuous follow ups are crucial in this regard,вЂќ Narvekar said. The rise showed signs of plateauing over the last week. It is the sustained follow ups that have helped the BMC in stemming the rise in cases. Patients are also asked to send their readings every morning. Calls are made every alternate day and patients also get an IVR call where they can key in whether their body temperature and oxygen levels are normal. Over the course of the week, staff from the war rooms call patients for repeated follow ups. In such cases, we provide institutional quarantine facilities,вЂќ Narvekar said. For instance, a small flat with a shared toilet and bathroom. вЂњThere are cases where home isolation is not possible. If home isolation is recommended for a patient, the staff asks if it is possible for him / her to isolate. If someone is symptomatic or has co-morbidities or is over 60 years, a team from the war room visits the patient. The staff at the war room then call each positive patient to ascertain which category they fall in: Symptomatic or asymptomatic, co-morbid, above 60 years of age, etc.ДЄfter determining the status of a patient, a doctor from the war room calls the patient to get a better understanding of symptoms and their status. The day starts with each ward getting a list from the Indian Council of Medical Research about positive cases. The BMC promoted the numbers through various media include social media and put out information about which areas of the city fell under which ward in case people didnвЂ™t know which war room to call.

By ensuring there was one single phone number to call for any COVID-related issue, the war rooms managed to address the anxieties that people had regarding the disease. People thought if you got COVID-19, you were bound to die, which is not the case. There was a lot of misinformation about the disease. The war rooms played a key role in addressing the anxieties caused by the pandemic, Mahesh Narvekar, chief of BMCвЂ™s disaster management cell, told this reporter. BMC Commissioner IS Chahal, who had recently taken charge then, decided that the COVID-19 response had to be decentralised and the ward-level war rooms were set up subsequently. The critical helpline was thus completely clogged as the BMC was inundated with calls. The arrival of the monsoon brought with it calls related to rain-related incidents such as falling trees and flooding. However, by June, cases were peaking in the city, increasing the load on the central helpline. When the pandemic first hit Mumbai in March 2020, there was one central BMC helpline - 1916. The BMC learnt about the merits of decentralisation the hard way. This line is linked to 30 more lines, thereby allowing 30 calls to be received simultaneously at any given point. A dedicated helpline number has been set up for each war room to oversee the cases arising in the ward. There are around 15-16 people who work in each shift, though the numbers can increase if there is a rise in cases in a particular ward.Д®very shift has at least one doctor on duty who takes calls and counsels and advises people who call. Each ward office has a disaster control room, which has been turned into a COVID response вЂwar roomвЂ™.Д®ach war room runs 24X7 with teachers and data entry staff working in three shifts - 7 am-3 pm, 3 pm-11 pm and 11 pm-7 am. Some 24 municipal wards of Mumbai are administered by the BMC. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Body (BMC), IndiaвЂ™s richest civic body, has decentralised its disaster response efforts in the countryвЂ™s most populous city, helping stem the number of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases.

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