MUMBAI: The New Year day brought some cheer with Mumbai registering only a 14% rise in the daily Covid tally as against 40% to 50% rise over the last few days. On Saturday, the city registered 6,186 cases as against 5,428 cases on Friday (the Thursday-to-Friday rise was around 50%).
The state tally correspondingly rose by 14% in the last 24 hours, registering 9,170 cases as against 8,067 on Friday.
There were 47,978 tests conducted in the city on Saturday, compared to 47,472 on Friday. In the state, testing numbers stood at 1.2 lakh on both Saturday and Friday.
The rapid surge in cases over the last 10 days had resulted in the state additional health secretary Dr Pradeep Vyas issuing a statement on Friday about the beginning of the “third wave”.
Deaths continued to remain low, with the state seeing seven, including one in Mumbai. The daily Covid update by the BMC stated that 89.9% of Saturday’s cases or 5,712 out of the 6347 were asymptomatic. “Only 389 patients were hospitalised,” said BMC additional commissioner Suresh Kakani.
He said only 9% of the 30,565 Covid beds are occupied in the city at the moment.
A state official said the Omicron variant virus had led to a spurt in infections across the world. “We have seen in South Africa that the rise is sharp but the decline is equally quick too,’’ he said.
State surveillance officer Dr Pradeep Awate said the pattern of Omicron infections need to be studied for another two weeks before trends emerge. “At the moment, there are more asymptomatic cases because we are actively doing contact tracing and testing,” he added.
Dr Prince Surana said that 23 patients were admitted to his Chembur hospital in the last few days with Covid. “We were to two patients a week back. However, most patients have mild infection and are admitted only for extra caution,” he said.
The Omicron-Covid wave is characterized by high transmissibility as compared to other strains. In Mumbai, the daily test positivity rate reached 13.22 % on Saturday, while the positivity rate on Friday was 11.86 %. The positivity rate was 4.84% on Wednesday and 7.91% on Thursday.
The state update showed that the Mumbai circle contributed 8,077 of the 9,170 cases on Saturday. Pune circle was a distant second with 686 cases. The cases in Thane and Navi Mumbai climbed to three digits in recent days. Mumbai circle registered three deaths and Pune, one.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/6186-new-cases-in-city-9170-in-state-growth-dips-to-14/articleshow/88640709.cms
