Mumbai reports over 5K Covid-19 cases

For the first time since the outbreak of Covid-19, the city recorded more than 5,000 cases of Covid-19 in a single day

For the first time since the outbreak of Covid-19, the city recorded more than 5,000 cases of Covid-19 in a single day. On Wednesday, Mumbai had 5,190 new cases of Covid-19, the highest single-day caseload recorded so far. Six deaths were reported taking the death toll to 11,610 deaths. Civic officials have pointed to ramped up testing — there were 40,400 tests conducted on Wednesday compared to 23,000 on Tuesday — to explain the spike.

(Satish Bate/HT Photo)

Until February 10, Mumbai was reporting between 200 and 400 new cases of Covid-19 per day. This increased to 1,000 new cases daily in early March. Wednesday’s caseload crossed the previous single-day highest of 3,779 cases, recorded on March 21. Mumbai has been reporting over 3,000 new cases every day since March 21. The city’s recovery rate is 88% with 3,32,713 recoveries and the mortality rate is 3.09%. There are 29,395 active cases in Mumbai.

Dharavi also recorded a 10-month high on Wednesday, with 62 new cases of Covid-19, which is the most cases it has reported in a day since May 2020. Since April 1, 2020, when the first case of Covid-19 was detected in the area, Dharavi has recorded 4,531 cases of Covid-19. Of these, 237 cases are currently active and 3,977 people have been discharged. Assistant municipal commissioner Kiran Dighavkar, who looks after Dharavi, said, “The daily caseload has been increasing across the city and due to this, Dharavi is also witnessing a spike. As we are increasing testing, more high-risk contacts are detected. We are also testing citizens randomly due to which more cases are getting detected.”

As part of its efforts to break the chain of Covid transmission, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started conducting rapid antigen tests on randomly-selected citizens in public places, including malls. In the last two days, 33,553 additional tests were conducted. On Wednesday, the civic body conducted 40,400 tests, of which 21,000 were rapid antigen tests. Overall, in the past year, the city has reported 3,74,641 cases and conducted 3.7 million tests. Mumbai’s overall Covid positivity rate is 9.75%.

Dr Rahul Pandit, who is member of Maharashtra’s Covid-19 task force, said, “We are not suggesting everything should be shut down again, but citizens need to ensure they head out only for economic reasons. Unwanted visits outside the house should be avoided for now. We also need to understand that Covid-appropriate behaviour has to be maintained even post vaccination. The cases may also go up to 6,000 or 8,000 in a day if we test aggressively. It is a good thing to test more and detect more if we want to curb the spread.”

Earlier this week, municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal had said the city can handle 6,000 cases per day. “Logically, we can predict that the number of cases per day will double as the number of tests done per day is doubled,” Chahal had said on Monday while emphasizing that there was no need to panic as most of the cases in Mumbai are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic.

BMC’s data shows that between February 22 and March 22, as the number of cases spiked in the city, most were come from age group of 30 to 39 years, which has 8,400 cases. The second-most affected age group is of 40 to 49 years, which has over 7,600 cases. Those between 50 to 59 years have 7,500 cases and 6,899 cases are from the age group of 20 to 29 years. The lowest surge — 2,500 cases — is in the age group of 0 to 19 years. There are over 5,100 cases in the age group of over 90 years. Cumulatively, the highest number of cases are from the age group of 50 to 59 years, which has over 69,000 cases. Ten thousand of total 11,592 deaths from Covid-19 have been reported from the age group of those above 50 years.

Assistant municipal commissioner Prashant Gaikwad said, “We are witnessing cases being reported across all age groups. However, above 80 years of age and in children, the cases are much higher. In all the remaining age groups, the spread is almost similar.” Speaking of the random tests being conducted in public places, like Chowpatty, Gaikwad said, “The aim is to detect the maximum number of citizens who are positive but roaming out in the open.” Those selected for testing must pay for the test.