MUMBAI: The civic claim that there is no post-Diwali surge in Covid cases in the city received a boost when, despite 17,801 Covid-19 tests, the highest conducted in a day in Mumbai so far, only 6% of those tested were positive.
However, BMC officials admitted “pockets” of concern were emerging; shopkeepers from the Dadar market, for instance, had been testing positive in the last few days.
The number of daily cases went up marginally (1,093) on Saturday as compared to below-1,000 last week, but BMC officials said this is merely a reflection of the increased number of tests performed daily. The positivity rate in Mumbai has been hovering around 7% for over a week now. “Despite increased testing, the percentage of positive patients has remained unchanged. There is clearly no surge yet,” said a senior official.
Of the 17,801 tests done on Friday, 9,051 were conducted through the RT-PCR method, the gold standard for Covid testing. Of these, 878 (10%) were positive. The remaining 8,750 tests were conducted using the rapid antigen test that provides results in 30 minutes; 215 (2%) of those tested using this method were positive.
Among the 105 stall owners tested at Dadar’s flower market, which witnessed a huge rush during Diwali, three tested positive despite being asymptomatic. The BMC convinced them to shift to a civic-run quarantine facility.
A BMC health official said it’s challenging to convince these people to get admitted at quarantine facilities. She said, “In other places (markets) in the area also, among those tested, very few were found positive earlier and they were asymptomatic. We are trying to test a maximum number of people and trace such asymptomatic patients at an early stage to control spread.”
BMC officials said they will continue testing more than usual to detect cases at the earliest. BMC has also started visiting homes of migrants who returned to the city in the last few days. Experts, however, said the relatively high temperatures for November along with lower levels of pollution (in comparison to, say, Delhi) may ensure Mumbai doesn’t see a huge post-Diwali surge. The period to worry about would be December-January, when pollution levels increase.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/covid-19-highest-number-of-tests-in-a-day-in-mumbai-but-positivity-rate-stays-unchanged/articleshow/79347048.cms
