Even though the Covid-19 outbreak is yet to be contained, recent developments, from lower average growth rate to increase in doubling rate to 51 days, have brought a sigh of relief for frontline workers and civic authorities.
The daily average cases in Mumbai went to as low as 759 and did not cross 1,500 since the first week of June, despite an increase in daily tests. The increase in doubling rate from 41 days on July 1 to 51 days as on Monday is a positive sign, said civic officials.
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has attributed the increase in doubling rate to their ‘Mission Zero’ plan introduced on June 22. Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Chahal, said, “A study done by a group of professors stated that the city’s R0 measure (also known as the reproduction number, is a measure of how many people may be infected by one patient) has come down from 9 to 1.1. This is a good indication of our situation. Along with this, the biggest advantage of increasing doubling rate is we get availability of beds in terms of using those beds on rotation as cases take a longer time to double. We need 200 beds every day, considering the current daily average cases as 85% of those are asymptomatic and can be kept in non-hospital beds.”
A senior civic official said, “When the plan was launched, the doubling rate of the city was 37 days. The aim was to increase it to 50 days in 2-3 weeks.”
Mission Zero is a 35-day action plan to increase surveillance in areas, specifically six administrative wards that had a higher growth rate and bring down the number of daily cases reported in these areas.
Along with this, the city’s recovery rate has also reached a high of 70%, whereas the recovery rate on July 1 was 57%. Of the 92,720 Covid cases in Mumbai as on Monday, 65,000 patients have already been treated and discharged.
Experts, however, said a lot more needs to be done. Madhav Sathe, retired professor of microbiology at Nair Hospital, said, “The situation in Mumbai looks under control, but it is also important to contain the virus in the outskirts, Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Our recovery rate of 70% is a good sign for the city, but the city is not testing to its full capacity and should at least conduct 12,000-15,000 tests per day. The strength of private testing labs has also not been utilised fully. Our next aim should be to bring down the fatality rate to below 3% from the current 5.5%.”
On Monday, Mumbai reported 1, 158 Covid-19 cases, taking the total to 94,146. Forty-seven deaths took the toll to 5,335, according to the state health department data. The data further states that 750 patients were recovered and discharged on Monday. A total of 65,622 patients have been treated and discharged by now. The active patients in the city are 22,900. The number of Covid tests done till Sunday is 3.96 lakh. Dharavi reported six new cases on Monday. The total cases in Dharavi reached 2,334. Of them, 2,039 have been discharged.
Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/covid-19-outbreak-mumbai-showing-signs-of-recovery/story-3UQmBjys918e4hUWCzgdxH.html
