Reducing COVID-19 deaths in Thane a priority: new civic chief

Thane, Jun 24 () Ensuring availability of beds in hospitals and bringing down COVID-19 fatalities in Thane will be the priorities for newly-appointed municipal commissioner Vipin Sharma who took charge on Wednesday.

Sharma, who replaced Vijay Singhal as civic chief on Tuesday amidst the COVID-19 situation in Thane, has asked officials to work unitedly to fight coronavirus.

"The Thane municipal corporation will ensure that (COVID-19) patients who need hospitalisation and need beds will get them," he said.

We will have to live with the virus but we will try to reduce severity of the crisis, he told officials.

"First of all, we will continue to do what we are doing well and work more effectively where-ever needed. Instead of providing beds to COVID-19 patients with no symptoms, those patients who need them urgently should get beds (in hospitals) under any circumstances," he said, adding that necessary health infrastructure will be created for this purpose.

Sharma told reporters that his other priority would be to plug loopholes in the system.

The COVID-19 case count in Thane district, which is part of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), stood at 23,492 as of Tuesday and fatalities at 812, a government official had said. CORR NSK NSK