Maharashtra: No significant rise in Covid-19 cases week after lifting of curbs

Mumbai: A week after the state government eased all Covid-19 curbs, there was no significant rise in cases

Mumbai: A week after the state government eased all Covid-19 curbs, there was no significant rise in cases. On Saturday, Maharashtra logged 132 new cases and six deaths. The tally stood at 130 cases and two deaths on April 2, when the state government had decided to end restrictions imposed on account of Covid.

Mumbai reported 55 Covid-19 cases and zero deaths on Saturday. (HT PHOTO)

However, a 67-year-old Mumbai resident with a travel history to Vadodara tested positive for the XE variant, as confirmed by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), New Delhi. He has been fully vaccinated with Covishield.

The patient was tested for Covid-19 as he was suffering from a mild fever on March 12 during his stay at Vadodara. The patient is asymptomatic and stable.

Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner and in charge of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) health department, said: “The patient recovered. The BMC has traced high-risk contacts of the patient and all of them have tested negative for Covid-19.”

Mumbai reported 55 Covid-19 cases and zero deaths on Saturday. With fresh addition, the caseload has mounted to 10,57,459, while the death toll remained at 19,560. In the 24 hours up till Saturday, 8,735 tests were conducted in Mumbai, and the daily positivity rate is 0.6% on Saturday.

The recovery rate in Mumbai is 98 percent and a total of 49 patients recovered on Saturday. The growth rate of covid-19 cases in the city, calculated week on week, is 0.004%.

So far, 78,75,080 cases have been reported in Maharashtra and the toll stands at 1,47,816.

Dr Pradeep Awate, the state’s surveillance officer, said that the trend over the past week did not show any significant rise in Covid-19 cases. “However, seven days is too small a period... We will need at least another week as the incubation period of this virus is around 14 days. But, there has been no significant uptick in the last seven days,” he noted.

Referring to the patient with the XE variant being detected, Awate added that the XE is a combination of the BA.1 and BA.2 strains of Omicron. “The third wave in India was driven by Omicron so the prevalence of a sub-lineage will make no significant difference. The fourth wave can set in only if there is the emergence of a significantly different variant which bypasses the immune system,” he said, adding that in India, the percentage of vaccination and the natural immunity due to both, reported and undiagnosed cases, was huge.