Next 15 days crucial to understand Covid spread: Mumbai civic body as trains start for all

Meanwhile, Mumbai’s Covid-19 tally rose to 309,303, with 328 new cases. Nine deaths took the toll to 11,361

With the local train services resuming for all the citizens after 10 months, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has said that the next 15 days will be crucial to understand the spread of Covid-19 following the development.

Long queues of passengers seen outside ticket windows at Dadar station, as train services opened for all citizens on Monday. (Pratik Chorge/HT)

“We feel that the next 15 days will be crucial and after that we will be in a position to comment whether the cases are going up due to local trains or not. We are keeping a tight watch on the daily cases and are also making preparations for the ongoing vaccination drive,” BMC’s additional commissioner Suresh Kakani said.

Said to be the lifeline of residents living in Mumbai and the surrounding satellite towns, the services were suspended following the Covid-19 outbreak last March and then restarted for essential service staffers, women and lawyers in different time slots.

Now, all citizens will be able to travel by local trains during three slots –from the start of the day’s services to 7 am; noon to 4 pm; and 9pm till the last service. The timings have been restricted to avoid crowding amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to BMC officials, it will not deactivate any Covid-19 infrastructure such as quarantine centres, dedicated Covid-19 hospitals, jumbo Covid-19 centres, for the next two months to ensure that the situation does not goes out of control, in case of a spike.

However, few of the centres have been temporarily deactivated after the cases declined in the city. But BMC said these centres can be activated within 24 hours, in case of an emergency situation.

“We are constantly monitoring the situation and until March 31, none of the Covid-19 infrastructure will be deactivated permanently,” said Kakani.

From Tuesday, BMC expects to kick off the second phase of the vaccination drive for around 200,000 frontline workers, including the police, civic officials, waste collectors, BEST staff etc. On Monday, the highest number (7,707) of healthcare workers (HCW) were vaccinated, against the target of 8,250 HCWs, at a turnout rate of 93%. A total of 47,397 HCW’s have been vaccinated so far in the city.

Mumbai’s Covid-19 tally rose to 309,303, with 328 new cases. Nine deaths took the toll to 11,361. The mortality rate is 3.67% and recovery rate is 94%.