Starting today, civic body will vaccinate citizens on Sundays too

Mumbai, for a third consecutive day, reported its highest single-day spike with 9,108 cases on Saturday, along with 27 deaths, taking the tally to 441,475 and toll to 11,754

Mumbai, for a third consecutive day, reported its highest single-day spike with 9,108 cases on Saturday, along with 27 deaths, taking the tally to 441,475 and toll to 11,754. On Saturday, Mumbai’s active cases also crossed the 60,000 mark. With the increasing cases, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Saturday said that starting this weekend it will also vaccinate on Sundays and all its vaccination centres will be running in two shifts for the same.

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The Central government earlier last week told all state governments to conduct vaccination even on Sundays in order to ensure the vaccination drive picks up pace in the country.

Sheela Jagtap, BMC’s immunisation officer, said, “All our vaccination centres will function on all Sundays up to April 30, and further going a decision will be taken at a later stage. From tomorrow, all vaccination centres will function even on a Sunday there is no decline in numbers there.”

The BMC has 116 vaccination centres and till now, it has vaccinated 1,330,573 citizens so far. On Saturday, 44,500 citizens between 45 and 59 age group were vaccinated followed by 12,389 senior citizens. Overall, including frontline and health care workers, 64,186 were vaccinated on Saturday.

Further, according to state health department’s data, city’s recovery rate is 83% with 367,899 recoveries, followed by mortality rate of 2.66%. There are 60,846 active cases in the city. The BMC has anticipated that the city will experience a scenario wherein daily, around 60,000 tests will be conducted in the city, followed by it reporting around 10,000 cases daily.

Municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal last week said, “Assuming that the number of positives in due course of time in Mumbai increases to 10,000 cases per day with assumption that approximately 15% of these would be symptomatic, and further assuming that every symptomatic patient will require a bed, the total number of beds required to handle 10,000 cases every day for a period of six to eight weeks will be around 21,000 beds.”

On Saturday, the BMC in a statement said, “Patients who are home isolated will be discharged from the civic body’s patient list after 10 days from symptom onset and if they have no fever for three consecutive days and their oxygen saturation is above 95.”

Thereafter the patient shall be advised to isolate at home and self-monitor their health for a further seven days. There is no need for a test after the period of home isolation is over. This would mean that a patient would remain isolated for a total of 17 days. The BMC allows home isolation in case of a patient being asymptomatic, or has mild symptoms, or is elderly, or has comorbidities but with no symptoms, after evaluation from an assistant medical health officer

Meanwhile, the BMC in a statement on Saturday appealed to citizens to behave in a Covid-19 appropriate manner in order to ensure the spread of Covid-19 is contained. The BMC also appealed to citizens to not take symptoms lightly and consult doctors or BMC clinics, in case of any difficulty. The BMC also said that over 2.4 million citizens have been fined in the last one year for not wearing a mask in which over Rs49 crore has been collected.