Mumbai reports only 824 new cases in 24 hours, lowest in last 40 days – Hindustan Times

Mumbai recorded 824 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, the lowest in the last 40 days, taking the tally of coronavirus infected in the maximum city to 68,410 and the death toll in the city reached 3,844 with the addition of 107 fatalities reported on Tuesday. Active Covid 19 cases in Mumbai stand at 29,982.

Maharashtra on the other hand, kept the trend of reporting more than 3,000 Covid -19 cases per day as seen for the entire last week, by recording 3,214 new infections on Tuesday, taking the state tally to 1,39,010 with 62,833 active cases.

The worst affected Indian state by Covid-19, also reported 248 deaths on Tuesday, including 75 registered in the last 48 hours and the remaining being backlogged from the last few weeks. The addition has taken the state death toll to 6,531 and the case fatality rate to 4.69%. The recovery rate, however, has improved to 50.09% with the discharge of a total of 69,631 patients till date. The data was released by the state health department on Tuesday.

The additional 1,328 deaths added last Tuesday on account of reconciliation of past data, made the death toll in the state jump by 2,403 in the last eight days. This resulted in the case fatality rate zooming to 4.69% on Tuesday from 3.79% on June 15.

The positivity rate in the state has risen multifold over the last few weeks. It was 27.45 % on Monday, an increase of close to 5 percentage points from 22.49 % recorded a month ago on May 22, and over 21% more than the meager 6.06% recorded on April 22. The positivity rate in Mumbai, too, has seen a rising trend. From 8.67% on April 21, the positivity rate in the metropolitan increased to 27.9% on May 21 and 27.5% on June 21.

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The test positivity rate is the percentage of tests that turn out to be positive for SARS-CoV-2. Maharashtra has so far conducted 7.87 lakhs tests, including 2.92 lakh in Mumbai alone.

Dr Avinash Supe, former KEM dean and member of the expert committee appointed by the state to recommend steps to curb the spread said, “As per the ICMR guidelines the tests are being performed on the symptomatic cases and hence the rate naturally ought to be high. When the tests are done for all contacts, the positivity rate is low.”

When asked if the high positivity rate is an indication of the community transmission, Dr Supe said, “It is a controversial subject, some epidemiologists say it’s already begun, some say no it hasn’t. The possibility of it (having begun) is high, but it is the matter of research by scientists and experts.” He added that though the case fatality rate is high, it is still within limits and barring a few areas, the situation in Mumbai is improving.

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However, experts also point out that the high positivity rate also indicates that the state is only testing the sick and not casting the net wide to know if the virus is spreading within communities.

6,05,141 people are currently home quarantined in the state, while 26,572 patients are under institutional quarantine.