Liberal policy gives slight push to testing numbers: BMC data

Daily tests avg up from 4,978 (July 1-7) to 5,976 (July 15-21)

Two weeks after testing was liberalised in the city, allowing citizens to get tested without a medical prescription from July 7, the daily testing numbers have increased marginally in Mumbai.

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From July 1 to July 7, the average number of daily tests was 4,978. The number went up to 5,673 tests daily between July 8 and July 14, and further to 5,976 between July 15 and July 21. Mumbai’s highest single-day number was 7,609 tests, conducted on July 24. Between July 1 and July 24, Mumbai has conducted 1.31 lakh tests, taking the average to 5,482 tests. The city is conducting 36,000 tests per million people, lower than Delhi’s 44,000 tests per million people. In the past one week, Pune has also increased its testing, bringing the number on a par with Mumbai.

Meanwhile, citizens complained of at least two-day waiting period to book tests and another 48 hours to get the results. Sneha Sedani, a Kandivli resident, said, “We lost our grandmother last week. Her results were negative. However, we wanted to get tested, considering my grandmother had pneumonia. The lab had two-day waiting period and allowed home testing only for senior citizens.”

Another Lower Parel resident, Chaitanya Dhargalkar, said, “My sister had fever for four days, and we thought of getting tested for Covid-19. On calling private labs, we came to know there was two-day waiting period, and it took two days more to get results.”

Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner, BMC, said, “We have 17-18 private labs and additional government labs. We have been focusing on increasing our testing for a few days now, using rapid antigen kits. The number of daily testing is also crossing the 7,000 mark. We plan to test carry out sero-surveillance to cover maximum population…There is a possibility that citizens are wary about getting tested. Earlier, those not having symptoms also wanted to get tested, but now there is awareness.”

Experts said stigma deters people from getting tested. Siddarth Paliwal, a private health consultant from Mumbai, said, “There is still stigma or fear in the minds of citizens to get tested. Also, liberalised testing policy does not mean BMC should leave it on citizens to get tested. The number of private labs should also be increased.”

On Sunday, Mumbai recorded 1,101 fresh cases and 57 new deaths, taking the city’s case tally to 109,161 and toll to 6,093. The number of discharged patients in Mumbai was 80,238 with a recovery rate of 73.5%, and active cases stood at 22,536. The fatality rate was 5.58%, and doubling rate 66 days. One hot spot that has shown signs of drastic improvement – Dharavi – recorded only two new cases on Sunday, bringing the area’s case count to 2,531, of which 2,168 have been discharged.