Covid-19: Mumbai likely to cross second wave’s peak of 11,206 daily cases today – Times of India

MUMBAI: The state reported 18,466 cases on Tuesday and 20 deaths, while Mumbai added 10,606 cases, a little short of the 11,206 daily cases it had seen during the peak of the second wave in April 2021, and two deaths. Fresh cases in the state have doubled from 9,000 to 18,000 in three days.
Mumbai, in all probability, will cross its second wave peak detection of 11,206 cases in the next 24 hours. Since the day the second wave surge had started, it had taken the city almost 50 days to reach the 11,000 mark. In the third wave, the level is likely to be breached in about 15 days.
Senior officials said the state may impose curbs on restaurant and mall timings, on places of worship and on attendance in government and private offices. The government is mulling allowing restaurants and malls to stay open only till 8pm and shutting down places of worship as there is no implementation of crowd control measures in these areas. “We will take a complete review. The Central government has also reduced attendance in its offices to 50%. All these measures will be discussed and sent to the CM for finalising,” Ajit Pawar said in Pune.
Senior officials said some felt curbs should be largely for cities like Mumbai, Thane and Pune reporting a high positivity rate. There are many districts still reporting cases in single digits. “Why should they suffer ahead of time,” said an official.
Tope said there is no requirement or even a discussion on imposing a lockdown as there are parameters like bed occupancy or oxygen use for a lockdown and the state is nowhere close to threshold level. “However, to ensure that cases do not reach that level, if need be, stricter restrictions may be added,” he said.
Daily Covid hospitalisations in Mumbai increased by 45% on Tuesday compared to Monday. There were 834 hospitalisations, while on Monday there were 574, and the day prior, 503. Nearly one-fifth of ICU beds (507 of 2,577) were occupied by Tuesday.
Dr Neelam Andrade, dean of Nesco jumbo centre, said their ICU patient count went up from 20 to 48, while ward patients increased from 500 to 700 in a day. The centre is preparing to open another hall by Wednesday. While civic officials said of the new cases, 89% were asymptomatic, many took to social media to question why Mumbai was witnessing a sharp rise in hospital admissions if the majority were asymptomatic patients.
AMC Suresh Kakani said people with comorbidities prefer to get hospitalised for better results. BMC has also got requests from individuals who didn’t have a support system at home. An elderly couple, for instance, preferred to get hospitalised after testing positive, Kakani said. “But duration of hospital stay is between 3-4 days. Most are symptoms-free by then and want to go home,” he said.
Meanwhile, officials are certain Omicron is the predominant strain in the city. “We may scale down genome sequencing to some extent as we know Omicron is circulating in the community,” Kakani said. The total caseload in the state is now 67.3 lakh, with 1,41,573 deaths. Active cases in the state surged to 66,308.
Cases in MMR too reported a surge. Navi Mumbai saw 1,072 cases, superseding the previous highest of 523 on Sunday. Cases in rural Thane surged to 151 from 46.