Daily Covid case count inches closer to 500 mark in Mumbai | Mumbai News – Times of India

MUMBAI: While Covid cases seem to have plateaued in Maharashtra with an average of 3,500 detections a day, the concern remains for Mumbai, where cases inched closer to 500 on Thursday.
According to the state Covid update on Thursday, the state registered 3,320 cases, including 498 in Mumbai. The state reported 61 deaths, of which five were reported in Mumbai. With this, the total caseload of the state rose to 65.34 lakh and deaths stood at 1,38,725.
The BMC dashboard for Covid, however, showed that the total number of beds for Covid increased from 18,467 on September 15 to 19,326 on September 22.
While only 10% of these beds were occupied last week, the occupancy dropped to 9.6% on September 22.
Dr Prince Surana said the number of patients in his Chembur hospital had increased in the last week. “We reduced our number of Covid beds from 69 to 35 a few weeks back when our occupancy dropped below 10, but on Thursday we are full,” said Dr Surana.
BMC officials are, however, not too perturbed. “We have the infrastructure in place to handle any increase,” said an official. The number of critical patients increased from 363 a week back to 375 on September 22.
Meanwhile, active cases in the state dropped further to 39,191 while the figure rose to 5,562 in Mumbai.
Senior officials from the state government said that even though cases continue to be constant in the state, districts have been asked to focus on increasing the number of tests.
“The next 10 days will be crucial to detect any spread due to the recently ended Ganpati festival,” said the official. At the state level, districts like Pune and Ahmednagar continue to add a high number of cases, on most days these districts are adding cases higher than Mumbai. Deaths in Ahmednagar, Solapur and Satara districts are also higher than reported by Mumbai.
“The situation is comfortable at the moment. However, districts have been asked to keep health infrastructure ready and to stock up on all essential medicines in case of a surge,” said the official.