State sees 44% rise in Covid-19 cases

Mumbai: Maharashtra reported 694 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, the highest number of single-day cases since October 2022

Mumbai: Maharashtra reported 694 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, the highest number of single-day cases since October 2022. On Wednesday, the state reported 483 new cases with three deaths.

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According to the health report by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) the city reported 192 new cases out of which 179 were asymptomatic. The state and city have 3,016 and 846 active cases respectively. Fifty-five Covid-19 patients in the city have been hospitalised.

Dr Maharudra Kumbhar, officer on special duty at SevenHills Hospital (SHH)- BMC’s Covid-19 facility, said they are seeing three to four new admissions every day. However, he said all the patients transferred to their hospital from other hospitals where they were admitted for some other medical reasons and incidentally, tested positive.

“None of the admitted patients are admitted primarily for Covid-19. They are all transfer patients. They have mild symptoms like cough, cold, fever and recover within five to six days,” he said. At present, SHH has 35 admitted patients.

The state has been seeing a steady rise in Covid-19 cases since March first week. The state health official attributed XBB.1.16-Omicron subvariant for the present spurt in Covid-19 cases in the state.

“Genome sequencing has shown XBB.1.16 has been the dominant strain in the state,” said Dr Rajesh Karyakarte, the state coordinator for genome sequencing and head of the Microbiology department at BJ Government Medical College and Sassoon Hospital- Pune.

State health officials said most XBB.1.16 patients had mild symptoms. The state health department on Wednesday reviewed the Covid-19 situation and their preparedness in the state. It has urged citizens not to panic but follow Covid-19 appropriate behaviour like following hand hygiene, cough hygiene, wearing masks in crowded places and poorly ventilated places etc.

The district and municipal corporations have been instructed to conduct screening of patients with symptoms of ILI/SARI (mild fever, chills, cough, body aches, sore throat, severe fever, respiratory distress, shortness of breath, severe cough, respectively) by health workers during hospital-level and field visits. The health officials have also been instructed to scale up testing and send RT-PCR-positive samples for genome sequencing.