Mumbai and Delhi were the earliest urban hotspots of India’s Omicron wave, but in recent days, they have seen their case trajectories dip. In Mumbai, the seven-day average of daily infections peaked at 17,523 for the week ended January 12. Since then, this has dropped to 8,816 cases a day for the week ended Wednesday — a drop of 50%. In Delhi, average daily cases soared to 23,529 for the week ended January 15. In the four days since, this
Mumbai and Delhi were the earliest urban hotspots of India’s Omicron wave, but in recent days, they have seen their case trajectories dip. In Mumbai, the seven-day average of daily infections peaked at 17,523 for the week ended January 12. Since then, this has dropped to 8,816 cases a day for the week ended Wednesday — a drop of 50%. In Delhi, average daily cases soared to 23,529 for the week ended January 15. In the four days since, this number has dropped 21%, with 18,607 daily infections in the week ended Wednesday.
Despite the reputation of the Omicron variant causing relatively milder infections, both cities saw an increase in the absolute number of hospitalisations. In Mumbai, hospital bed occupancy for Covid-19 patients rose from 1,874 on December 30 (the earliest this data is available) to 7,432 on January 9. Since then, this has dropped nearly every single day. As on Wednesday, only 5,058 beds in the city were occupied — a drop of 32% in 10 days. In Delhi, while there isn’t a clear drop in hospitalisation just yet, there are early signs of a peak with bed occupancy stabilising. The number of patients hospitalised with Covid-19 dropped for the first time since the start of the Omicron wave — from 2,784 (the highest in this wave) on Monday to 2,730 on Tuesday. And because the city’s peak came a few days after Mumbai’s, this number looks set to improve in the coming days. Most importantly, neither city looked like it was likely to see a crisis of the scale witnessed during the Delta wave last year.
These findings, which have been consistent with early global Omicron outbreak centres such as South Africa, point to a rapid spike in cases, few hospitalisations, and an equally sharp fall in cases. They also suggest that, with a certain degree of planning of hospital resources such as beds, local governments should be able to see off the Omicron surge without major alarm. And finally, they highlight yet again that this is a wave in which it makes sense to track and react to hospitalisation data, not caseloads. Indeed, the Maharashtra government is already considering lifting restrictions, including in Mumbai, starting next week, and, if the current trajectory of hospitalisation in Delhi continues, the Union Territory’s government should do so too.
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