Mumbai News

New Covid cases remain under 5,000 in Maharashtra and 400 in Mumbai amid uptick – Times of India

MUMBAI: The number of Covid-19 cases detected in the state and city increased slightly on Saturday. The state continued to add under 5,000 cases, while the city added nearly 400 cases.
The state counted 4,831 new cases and 126 deaths, taking the total cases to 64.52 lakh and the death toll to 1,37,026 since the arrival of the novel coronavirus in March last year.
Cases in the city continued to rise for the fourth consecutive day, with 391 new cases registered. The test positivity rate stood at 1% after several weeks of ranging between 0.7% and 0.9%.
“We are still doing a sizable number of Covid-19 tests daily. But the rise could just be the result of reducing the restrictions,” BMC executive health officer Dr Mangala Gomare said.
The average number of Covid-19 tests in the city has been 35,000 per day, with the BMC stepping up testing on certain days to take it to around 50,000.
Dr Shashank Joshi, who is a member of the state government task force on Covid-19, said that genomic surveillance in the city had shown that there were only three main strains in circulation here, namely, Delta, Kappa and Delta-plus.
“There is no novel strain that could pose a big threat right now. However, we do need to be on our guard and avoid visiting all crowded places, and observe behaviour that is Covid-appropriate,’’ Dr Joshi said.
Four new Covid-19 deaths were registered in the city, taking the death toll to 15,972 since the beginning of the pandemic here.
Medical education minister Amit Deshmukh said that the slight rise in cases in some of the districts was concerning and it was feared that this increase would intensify and turn into a third wave.
He appealed to the public to follow all Covid-19 protocols during the festive season. He directed the administration not to let its guard down and to take preventive steps to reduce the severity of the third wave.
Active cases in the state and city increased slightly. The total active cases in the state rose to 51,821, of which 3,406 were in the city.

Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/mumbai-new-cases-remain-under-5000-in-state-and-400-in-city-amid-uptick/articleshow/85725965.cms