MUMBAI: The city’s Covid graph climbed for the fifth consecutive day, with the BMC registering 731 cases on Saturday.
The state’s daily tally rose correspondingly to 1,485. A closer look at the daily Covid update revealed that the Mumbai region (comprising Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Palghar and Raigad) accounted for 68% of the state’s Saturday’s caseload. Of the 1,485 cases, 1,011 are from the Mumbai region. Pune region is a distant second with 289 cases.
The only encouraging sign is that Mumbai for the sixth time in December recorded zero deaths. The state added 12 deaths to its 1.4 lakh toll. The rest of the parameters -- daily test positivity rate, the number of sealed buildings and bed occupancy -- are showing an upward trend. The positivity rate increased from 0.53 on December 10 to 1.8% on December 24. The number of sealed buildings has gone up from 11 at the start of the week to 17.
Of the 15,299 Covid beds in the city, occupancy has risen from 879 on December 19 to 1,176 on December 24. However, BMC additional commissioner Suresh Kakani said this increase is mainly because Omicron suspects are being quarantined in hospitals. Navi Mumbai detected 71 new Covid cases, the highest in the last three months. The rise in cases in the last few days has also led to swelling patients’ volume in the Covid health care centres. The number of active cases has increased to 446 now from the previous low of 225 a fortnight ago in Navi Mumbai. Officials say they have ramped up testing from 7,000 per day to nearly 9,000 per day.
Active cases in the state and Mumbai also continue to rise. State government officials said districts have been directed to ramp up testing and even ensure that the people in home isolation are following protocols. The Centre has sent multidisciplinary teams to Maharashtra for better monitoring and suggesting any changes in the protocols to curb the spread of Omicron.
Dr Shashank Joshi, who is a member of the state government’s task force on Covid-19, said the public health machinery has to check the spread of cases. “We now have sporadic cases, but if transmission continues to increases and case doubling rate decreases, we could see large cluster outbreaks between January 15 and February 15,” said Dr Joshi.
(Inputs from BB Nayak)
