MUMBAI: Continuing with its declining graph, Mumbai’s daily Covid cases on Monday dipped to 1,857 — almost a tenth of the caseload a fortnight ago and the lowest so far this year. The state also reported a 30% drop in cases in the last 24 hours while adding 28,286 cases on Monday.
The state reported a drop in Covid deaths as well for the fourth day in a row, but it was still higher than the average daily fatalities recorded for the last few months. The state registered 36 deaths, of which 11 were from Mumbai.
Officials attributed much of the drop in numbers to low testing during the weekend. Only 34,301 tests were done in the city, when the usual figure has been almost double that during the Omicron wave. “The low tally is due to the Sunday effect,” said BMC additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani. “But the third wave is on the decline and we have other parameters pointing to that as well,” he added. Daily hospitalisations have dropped, the percentage of occupied beds has dipped to 10.2% as against 15%-plus a week ago and the doubling rate of the infection has more than doubled in the same time to 144 days.
Kakani said the only concern right now is the daily toll, which is in double digits (after remaining in a single digit for five months) but this is in keeping with the trend of deaths peaking about a fortnight after the peak in cases. “Every life is important, but the death rate during the third wave has been 0.07% unlike the earlier two waves,” said Kakani.
Kakani said the city’s caseload could drop below 1,000 over the week. The tally across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region too dropped by half, with 4,773 cases registered on Monday. State government officials said cases in Mumbai were clearly declining and the surge is now being reported from other districts, especially the Pune region. “We are closely monitoring the tests carried out in these districts. With positivity rate on the rise, districts have been asked to ramp up testing,” said an official. According to the health department’s daily Covid bulletin, the Pune region reported 9,165 cases, the highest in the state. Nashik region stood third with 3,401 cases.
Like Mumbai, hospitalisation is not on the rise in other districts. Nearly 90% beds are vacant in the state. “Once cases start spreading to smaller districts, we could see a higher rate of hospitalisation. Though the caseload may be smaller than Mumbai, it could be enough to overwhelm the health infrastructure in those areas,” said an official. He said it is clear from the Mumbai example that the Omicron wave is sharper but shorter, and it is expected that by mid-February, cases in the state will start to report a decline. “Once cases in cities like Pune, Nashik and Nagpur, which are seeing a surge at the moment, start to decline, there will be an overall dip in the state’s tally,” said the official.
