Bengaluru civic body to deploy 50 ambulances for COVID-19 patients

The Bengaluru civic body, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has planned to deploy 50 ambulances for COVID-19 patients and primary, secondary contacts to take them to institutional quarantine centres.

In a recent meeting with Palike officials on Tuesday (June 23), special commissioner of BBMP D Randeep took the decision. It was decided that out of the 50, six will be in Bengaluru Urban limits, four will be in Bengaluru Rural and 38 will be in eight BBMP zones.

The remaining ambulances will be on standby at the head office of BBMP. Apart from them, eight vehicles will be used to carry COVID-19 patients who succumbed to the infection.

A control room to send the ambulances to patients will also be set up by the civic body. 17 vehicles will be utilized to take the swab tests from primary and secondary contacts. Besides these, five vehicles will be used to take swab tests of those affected with influenza like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) problems.

RELATED NEWS: Bengaluru’s spike in COVID cases calls into question state’s tracing model

In a period of 10 days, i.e., between 13 to 23 June, Bengaluru witnessed a 132 per cent spike in COVID-19 cases. However, even with the spike, Bengaluru is better off than the other metropolitan cities in India. As of June 23, Bengaluru Urban reported a total of 996 active COVID-19 cases.

So far, Karnataka has recorded a total of 9,399 confirmed COVID-19 cases, while 142 people have died of the infection.