Mumbai positivity rate drops 11 percentage points

Mumbai’s test positivity rate dropped from a high of 29.9% on January 6 to 18.76% on January 11, a drop of 11.14 percentage points in less than a week

MUMBAI Mumbai’s test positivity rate dropped from a high of 29.9% on January 6 to 18.76% on January 11, a drop of 11.14 percentage points in less than a week. Test positivity rate or TPR is the number of confirmed positive cases per 100 tests conducted. On January 7, the day the city recorded its highest single-day spike of 20,971 cases, the TPR was 28.95% on account of 72,442 tests conducted. On January 8, the corresponding numbers were 20,318 cases and 71,019 tests, with a TPR of 28.61%.

Test positivity rate or TPR is the number of confirmed positive cases per 100 tests conducted (Bhushan Koyande)

On Tuesday, the city recorded 11,647 cases after 62,097 tests were conducted in 24 hours, according to data released by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

Municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal said, “Daily cases are down from 20,700 [approximately] to 11,647 in the last four days. Mumbai’s positivity rate is down from nearly 30% to less than 20%. Eighty percent of hospital beds are vacant. On Tuesday, 851 hospital beds were newly occupied in one day, but 966 beds also got vacated.”

The BMC chief urged Mumbai residents to exercise extreme caution, wear masks in public places, follow Covid-19 appropriate behaviour, but to not panic. Out of the 851 admissions on Tuesday, 76 Covid-19 patients needed oxygen beds.

So far, Mumbai has conducted a total of 14,325,144 Covid-19 tests.

Chahal said, “Since the beginning of the third wave on December 21, 46 deaths have been reported in 22 days.” The case fatality rate (number of deaths per 100 confirmed cases) in the city is 1.7%. Mumbai reported two deaths due to Covid-19 on Tuesday. BMC data also indicated that of the city’s 100,523 active Covid-19 cases until Tuesday, 83% are asymptomatic.

Even though the city’s Covid-19 graph seems to be gradually tapering, cases reported in just the first 11 days of January 2022 comprise 16.35% of Mumbai’s overall Covid-19 caseload. Between January 1 and January 11, Mumbai reported 153,358 Covid-19 cases out of a total caseload of 937,817 since March 2020. The state capital makes up for 13.42% of Maharashtra’s total Covid-19 cases (6,987,938), whereas at the end of December 2021, Mumbai’s share was 11.6%.