Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar on Tuesday warned that the third wave of Covid-19 is not coming, it is already in the state, amid preparations for Ganesh Chaturthi.
Coining a new slogan, “Mera Ghar, Mera Bappa" ahead of the festivities, Pednekar insisted people celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi at their houses and avoid large gatherings in view of the pandemic.
Earlier, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray also appealed to political parties to immediately stop protests, meetings and other programmes to avoid large gatherings amid slight increase in the number of daily COVID-19 cases in the state.
"We can celebrate festivals later. Let us prioritise the lives and health of our citizens. The situation can go out of hand in view of the spike in daily cases," Thackeray said in a statement, reported news agency PTI.
"Who would like to impose restrictions on festivals and religious programmes? But people's lives are important," he said. The chief minister said the upcoming festive days were crucial and challenging. The onus is on political parties to ensure things do not go out of control, he said.
Meanwhile, in the first six days of September, Mumbai has recorded over 28 per cent of the total COVID-19 cases that it had reported during the entire last month, as per civic data. The data shows that Mumbai reported 2,570 COVID-19 infections in the last six days of September, which comes to 28.9 per cent of the total 9,147 cases recorded in the entire month of August.
Besides, the city reported 21 fatalities in the last six days, while it had recorded 157 deaths due to COVID-19 during the entire last month. With the surge in daily cases, the active COVID-19 cases, which had dipped to 2,700, jumped to 3,771 on Monday.
The number of buildings sealed due to the COVID-19 cases rose to 44 from 20 in August. In another worrying parameter, the average doubling rate of COVID-19 cases worsened to 1,290 days after improving to over 2,000 days.
The average growth rate based on the past seven days increased to 0.06 per cent from 0.04 per cent, as per the data.
On Monday, Mumbai reported 379 new coronavirus cases and five fatalities, taking the tally of infections to 7,46,725 and the death toll to 15,998. The city is now left with 3,771 active COVID-19 cases, a BMC official said.
The daily COVID-19 cases in Mumbai were recorded over 400 since September 1, but after a gap of five days, the city logged less than 400 infections on Monday.
On Sunday, Mumbai had recorded 496 COVID-19 cases and two fatalities.
