Mumbai's iconic racecourse to become isolation facility for Covid-19 patients

Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, May 5

Overriding objections from Mumbai’s elite who control the city’s iconic Mahalaxmi racecourse, the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra government has decided to turn parts of it into an isolation facility for Covid-19 patients.

“A 300-bed isolation facility is being constructed at the Mahalaxmi racecourse. At the moment we are using the parking lot for the isolation facility,” Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Praveen Pardeshi said in a video call with journalists here.

The facility will house Covid-19 patients who have been categorized as asymptomatic, Pardeshi said.

Home department officials from the state government say the entire 225 acres of the verdant racecourse could be acquired to house Covid-19 patients if required.

Office-bearers of the Royal Western India Turf Club (RWITC), which comprises the city’s elite including several industrialists, had initially objected to the racecourse being used as an isolation facility. Top bureaucrats who frequent the races were told by the club members that grounds did not have enough toilet and sanitation facilities if property was turned into an isolation centre.

The Maharashtra government has pointed out to the RWITC that the land was owned by the state and was leased out to the club for conducting races.

However officials from the disaster management cell of the Maharashtra government have planned installation of mobile toilets and oxygen lines for patients who develop complications from the virus.

The Maharashtra government has fast-tracked construction of facilities at a number of venues across the city, including the Nehru Planetarium, the Nehru Science Centre, open grounds owned by various entities amidst estimates that the number of people testing positive for the virus would touch 70,000 by the middle of this month.

Though the BMC estimates that Covid-19 cases would peak at around 35,000 in Mumbai, the central government has warned of the figures being double the number.

Estimates by the central government say more than 63,000 of the people who test positive in the city would be asymptomatic but most would require to be isolated from their congested homes.