Mumbai crosses 100,000 Covid-19 cases 129 days after reporting first infection

The city crossed the grim milestone of 100,000 Covid-19 cases, 129 days after it had recorded the first case on March 11. Mumbai on Saturday reported 1,186 cases,

The city crossed the grim milestone of 100,000 Covid-19 cases, 129 days after it had recorded the first case on March 11. Mumbai on Saturday reported 1,186 cases, pushing up its count to 100,350, and 65 fatalities took the city’s toll to 5,650.

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Mumbai, which is the worst affected city in Maharashtra, took 91 days to reach 50,000 cases on June 8, with the recent 50,000 infections added to the city’s tally in just 40 days. Active Covid-19 cases in the city stand at 23,917, according to the state health department bulletin, which states that 70,492 people have so far recovered in the city. Mumbai’s recovery rate is 70.24%.

With the rise of cases having plateaued over the past month, when Mumbai has recorded infections in the range of 1,000-1,500 every day, citizens are now waiting for the Covid-19 case curve to start dipping.

Civic officials and experts, however, said it would take a few more weeks before they can declare with certainty that cases have started to drop. Officials said the situation in Mumbai is far better now than what it was in April, May and June.

While the number of active cases in Mumbai has gone down from around 30,000 in June to 24,000 in July, the doubling rate, too, has improved from 28 days to 54 during the same period.

Where does Mumbai currently stand?

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has increased its daily Covid testing capacity from an average of 4,000 tests in June to 6,000 tests in July. Since July 7, the civic body also allowed citizens to get tested at private laboratories without a doctor’s prescription or self-declaration.

“This should have had increased the number of daily cases, but the number has stayed between 1,200 and 1,600. This is a good sign. We are also prepared with our health facilities if there is a surge in the cases,” said a civic official.

The city has conducted 427,378 tests so far and has a positivity rate of 23.48%.

The recovery rate of Mumbai currently stands at 70.24% in comparison to Maharashtra’s 55.05%. A high recovery rate has also helped in reducing the number of active cases in the city. BMC claims to have around 7,000 beds of Covid patients lying vacant in its health facilities.

The cause for concern for Mumbai is its case fatality rate (CFR). The pandemic has claimed 5,585 lives in the city so far, with a CFR of 5.63%. The state’s CFR stands at 3.85%.

One of the primary reasons for the sudden spike in CFR was BMC adding 862 old fatalities to the city’s toll in June after a reconciliation exercise.

Looking ahead

With the case curve of Mumbai flattening, most restrictions in the city have been lifted gradually by the authorities. The state government and BMC have plans to also open up malls, theatres, restaurants and gymnasiums in a phased manner soon.

Civic chief Iqbal Singh Chahal had said on Tuesday that reopening of malls and restarting suburban trains for the general public will only happen after the situation in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), which includes Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan-Dombivli, among other areas, improves.

“The situation looks under control [in Mumbai] for now, considering the number of cases that are reported every day... Nearly 85% of the total patients are asymptomatic… Also, it’s taking much longer for cases to double, which helps in bed availability. If this trend continues, it will be easier for us to bring down the number of cases in the future,” Chahal had said.

Civic officials said extending more relaxations will also depend on citizens as they will have to continue to follow social distancing norms and take precautions.

“BMC should now prioritise restricting movement of senior citizens and patients with co-morbidities. Also, it needs to check if the city is heading towards herd immunity. There needs to be more community participation and involvement of private health practitioners. Result of all of these measures will ensure what needs to be done for future relaxations in the city,” said Sanjay Pattiwar, a public health expert.

Covid fight so far

Around a month after the first Covid-19 case was found in Mumbai on March 11, the total cases in the city had crossed the 1,000-mark and there were 38 fatalities. By the end of April, areas like Worli and Dharavi had emerged as hot spots, with a significant number of cases in slum pockets and densely populated localities.

Authorities then came up with several initiatives such as ‘Chase the Virus’, ‘Save Lives Strategy’ and ‘Rapid Action Plan’ in order to increase testing, enhance contact tracing, improve fatality rate and bring down cases in hot spots. All this and proactive citizens helped to improve the situation in Worli and Dharavi, which now see very few cases.

However, over the past four months, there have been numerous complaints from patients and their relatives as the crumbling health infrastructure of the city could not handle the spread of the virus. There were reports of deaths owing to unavailability of beds and ambulances, delayed admissions, and lack of timely treatment. The bed capacity has been gradually scaled up.