Mumbai’s daily Covid cases may reach 6,000: BMC

After reporting the highest daily caseload since the beginning of the outbreak — 3,779 new cases — on Sunday, Mumbai recorded 3,262 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday

For the third time this month, the city saw over 3,000 new cases of Covid-19 when on Monday, 3,262 new cases were recorded. The total number of Covid cases stands at 365,937, of which 23,671 are active. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) anticipates the daily caseload could go up to 6,000 in coming days as it plans to double the number of tests conducted daily. However, municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal has said another lockdown was not expected in Mumbai as the situation is manageable since the majority of the new cases are asymptomatic.

Mumbai’s daily Covid cases may reach 6,000: BMC

After reporting the highest daily caseload since the beginning of the outbreak — 3,779 new cases — on Sunday, Mumbai recorded 3,262 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday. The city’s recovery rate has slipped to 90% from 95% in February. The overall growth rate of Covid-19 has shot up to 0.69% compared to 0.20% - 0.25% recorded in February and early March. The doubling rate is down to 97 days, compared to 455 days recorded in mid-February.

Chahal said on Monday, “Logically, we can predict that the number of cases per day will double as the number of tests done per day is doubled. As of today, BMC has no plans to impose a lockdown in Mumbai as the situation is under control. Even today, about 86% of the 3,200-odd patients in Mumbai are asymptomatic. Among the remaining, 50% are mildly symptomatic and do not need to go to hospitals for treatment, but are quarantined at home. So at a time, not more than 1,000 hospital beds will be occupied even if we have 6,000 cases in a day.”

On Monday, BMC started conducting rapid antigen tests at malls, shopping centres and markets by randomly selecting visitors. The civic body plans to increase the number of tests conducted daily from 25,000 to 50,000 approximately. So far, Mumbai has conducted 3,730,450 tests, of which 19,347 were conducted on Sunday.

On Monday, Mumbai reported 10 deaths from Covid-19, taking the toll to 11,569, with a case fatality rate of 3.1%. The daily positivity rate has jumped to 16.8%, compared to 12% on the weekend and 4-5% in early March.

Suresh Kakani, additional civic chief and in charge of BMC’s public health department, on Sunday said, “We can sustain this spike in cases because of our available medical infrastructure. Lockdown is not being planned in Mumbai as it brings all activities to a complete halt. We are going to increase the city’s bed capacity. Testing is being scaled up and vaccination is being accelerated.”

On Friday, BMC asked private hospitals to reactivate all beds reserved for Covid-19 beds. At present, there are 2,496 beds reserved for Covid patients in private hospitals. This number will be increased to approximately 4,800. Kakani said, “As a majority of cases are from residential buildings, patients prefer to get admitted to a private hospital instead of a municipal hospital. Our municipal hospitals have already activated their Covid-19 beds, but these will also be increased.” There are currently 10,198 beds reserved for Covid cases in municipal hospitals.

Of the total 12,694 hospital beds for Covid patients, 820 are for asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases; 1,539 are beds in intensive care units (ICU); 966 are ventilator beds; and 8,461 beds are equipped with oxygen points. Kakani said the number of hospital beds for Covid patients will increase to 16,000 in the next two days and within a week, it will go up to approximately 20,000.

On Monday, 42,420 people were vaccinated in Mumbai across 100 vaccination centres. Of those vaccinated on Monday, 22,185 are senior citizens and 4,975 are above 45 years of age with comorbidities. While 35,232 beneficiaries received their first dose, 7,188 received the second. Of the 10,579 frontline workers who were vaccinated, 5,537 received their second dose. Of the 4,681 healthcare workers who were vaccinated, 1,651 received their second shot.

A total of 902,077 beneficiaries have been vaccinated in the city, of which 420,303 are senior citizens and 66,258 are above 45 years old with comorbidities.

Meanwhile, the first vaccination centre in Dharavi started on Monday at Urban Health Centre with 68 people getting vaccinated. Dharavi, on Monday reported 40 new cases.