City reports 16,420 cases

The city on Wednesday reported 16,420 fresh Covid-19 cases pushing its daily test positivity rate by six percentage points over the previous day

Mumbai: The city on Wednesday reported 16,420 fresh Covid-19 cases pushing its daily test positivity rate by six percentage points over the previous day. On Tuesday, the city had reported 11,647 cases; it recorded 13,648 on Monday — a slump usually attributable to fewer tests over the weekend — after recording close to 20,000 cases starting January 6. However, the hospitalisation rate fell for the fifth continuous day on Wednesday to 18.8%.

On Tuesday, the city had reported 11,647 cases; it recorded 13,648 on Monday — a slump usually attributable to fewer tests over the weekend (Praful Gangurde)

Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal attributed the rise in cases on Wednesday to the Centre’s advisory issued Monday stating that only symptomatic individuals need to undergo tests.

“Due to the recent change in the national Covid testing guidelines two days ago, where it has been directed that only symptomatic cases will be tested, it is likely to create spike in positivity as most of the symptomatic cases would be almost confirmed positive cases,” the civic chief said.

The test positivity rate (TPR) — a ratio of the confirmed Covid positive cases to every 100 tests conducted — was 28.94% on January 7, when Mumbai recorded 20,971 cases. Since then, it has been on the decline. On January 8, the TRP fell marginally, to 28.60%, and thereafter to 23.03% on January 10. However, in the past two days, it rose again to 18.75% on January 11 and 24.38% on Wednesday.

According to a new benchmark set by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), bed occupancy rate will be the new criteria to impose restrictions instead of positivity rate. Owing to this, the BMC last week said that bed occupancy rate of 50% would call for thinking towards imposing additional restrictions.

On the falling bed occupancy rate, Chahal on Wednesday said, “It is because Delta variant is fast disappearing and Omicron taking over in Mumbai.” According to the December 31 results of genomic sequencing declared by the BMC, 56% of the random positive samples of Covid-19 were confirmed to be Omicron variant. Chahal last week said that experts were of the opinion that 80% of the cases testing positive in Mumbai are the Omicron variant, and in the coming days it may become 100% of all cases tested.

“Generally on Wednesday, the backlog is also cleared and this could be reason for increased cases, but we will wait till Friday before deciding the future course of action in city,” Suresh Kakani, Additional Municipal Commissioner of the BMC said.

Meanwhile, Mumbai Mayor Kishori Pednekar on Wednesday appealed to citizens to get vaccinated against Covid-19. “Since February 2021, 94% of Covid deaths have been among those who have not taken the vaccine shot. I appeal to all citizens to go out and get vaccinated considering the severity of Covid goes down with vaccination.”

The recovery rate in the city is 87% with 832,933 recoveries. The mortality rate in the city is 1.72% and there are 102,282 active cases in the city. As many as 67,339 tests were conducted in the city. The total case tally in the city is 954,237 and the toll is 16,420. The daily positivity rate on Wednesday was 24.38% up from around 18% on Tuesday.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in its advisory dated January 10 had said that symptomatic individuals (cough, fever, sore throat, loss of taste and/or smell, breathlessness and/or other respiratory symptoms), at-risk contacts of laboratory confirmed cases followed by contacts that are elderly (above 60 years) and individuals with co-morbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, chronic lung or kidney disease, obesity among other things, should be tested. However, this advisory did not restrict self-testing.