For the first time since start of pandemic, zero Covid cases in Mumbai

Mumbai: For the first time since the Covid pandemic hit Mumbai on March 16, 2020, the city witnessed no new Covid cases on Tuesday

Mumbai: For the first time since the Covid pandemic hit Mumbai on March 16, 2020, the city witnessed no new Covid cases on Tuesday. While this thought may be comforting, experts have warned citizens not to let their guard down just yet.

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Covid patients now occupy just two beds in city hospitals. The total death toll so far in the city that has borne the brunt of the pandemic stands at 19,747.

For more than a week now, the total number of new cases detected in the city have been in single digits. In fact, many wards have not had any new cases for some time now. Civic officials attribute this to large scale vaccination, with almost 90% of Mumbaikars having received two doses of the Covid vaccine.

“It is advisable that people take the third dose to ensure their bodies can fight with the virus if they were to get infected. The uptake for the booster dose has been very low in Mumbai,” said a civic official.

State Covid task force member Dr Rahul Pandit said that it is still too early to let our guards down. “In fact, we need to maintain Covid-appropriate behaviour so that the number of new infections remains low,” he said.

At the peak of the first wave of Covid, the city had around 21,000 Covid affected people and the fatalities were in the hundreds every day. In the subsequent waves of the viral infection over the last couple of years, the city has witnessed a lot of human tragedies including deaths, hunger, loss of livelihood and violence. Several new variants of the virus like Omicron, BF 7, XBB, XBB 1.5 have afflicted Mumbaikars in this time.