Mumbai sees 104% rise in Covid-19 cases in September compared to last month – Hindustan Times

The number of Covid-19 cases in the city rose 104%, to 40,957 (September 1-22) from 20,031 (August 1-22), according to the state health department data. The number of deaths in this period in September dropped to 862, compared to 990 from August 1-22.

Civic authorities claim the spike in the number of cases is owing to increased testing and unlocking. The daily cases also started to increase owing to festivals in August. The daily testing in August was between 7,000 and 9,000. However, in September, the daily testing is between 10,000 and 15,000.

According to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) data, on August 1, five months after the first case was reported in Mumbai, the number of tests was over five lakh.

However, the number of tests rose to over 10 lakh by September 22. This also means the testing doubled in the period of around 50 days.

HT reported on September 21 that in the past 31 days, the city has recorded case fatality rate (CFR) of 2.2% (1,115 deaths and 51,617 cases), which has helped bring down Mumbai’s overall CFR from 5.5% to 4.5% between August 20 and September 20. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) attributed this dip in CFR to weekly monitoring at private and municipal hospitals as part of its ‘Mission Save Lives’ launched in June. CFR is deaths due to Covid-19 as a per cent of the total cases reported.

BMC chief Iqbal Singh Chahal on September 6 told HT: “For the next 30 days, the civic body expects to detect daily around 2,000 cases as it aims to increase daily testing to around 12,000-14,000 tests.”

Chahal had added the capacity is to conduct around 15,000 tests, and we are planning to optimise testing. So far, over 10.22 lakh tests have been conducted in the city, with overall positivity rate of 18.22%.

Dr Siddarth Paliwal, a city-based private health consultant, said, “It is a good sign that the number of deaths has come down despite the number of cases going up drastically. This is because of early testing or detection of possible Covid-19 patients. Also, availability of drugs to stabilise several critical patients has also helped bring down the mortality rate.”

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the city reported 2,360 cases taking the tally to 190,264 and 49 deaths taking the toll to 8,604. A total of 154,088 patients have recovered. The city’s recovery rate is 80.98%. The city has 27,186 active cases and the fatality rate is 4.52%. Dharavi recorded 22 new cases, taking its tally to 3,087.