80% jump in Maharashtra Covid tally, Mumbai records 1,242 cases – Times of India

MUMBAI: Within a 24-hour span, the Covid tally in Maharashtra rose by over 80% with Mumbai and the satellite cities of Thane and Navi Mumbai accounting for more than 90% of Tuesday’s caseload of 1,881 cases, reports Malathy Iyer.
The rise in Mumbai was 83%-from 676 on Monday to 1,242 on Tuesday. The daily tally in the city crossed the 1,000-mark after five months, with the previous highest single-day tally on January 29 (1,411 cases). Pune, however, reported a case of Omicron variant BA.5-a woman, 31, who was asymptomatic and has recovered. Public health doctors said more testing had thrown up more cases, indicating a surge, but they ruled out fears of a fourth wave.
Mumbai hospital admissions up, case doubling rate falls to 986 days
Thane city and Navi Mumbai on Tuesday registered 153 and 108 Covid cases, respectively, while Pune city was placed fourth with 82 cases. Most other districts in the state had fewer than 20 cases to report.
Pune, however, reported another case of the newer Omicron sub-lineage after seven cases of BA.4 and BA.5 were found 10 days ago. State health department surveillance officer Dr Pradip Awate said: “According to the latest report of whole genomic sequencing from BJ Medical College, Pune, a 31-year-old woman from Pune has been found positive for the BA.5 variant.” The patient was asymptomatic and recovered in home isolation.
In Mumbai, apart from the rise in cases, other tell-tale signs of the Covid surge were apparent. First, the number of hospital admissions jumped from 54 on Monday to 74 on Tuesday.
While most private hospitals have no Covid admissions at the moment, there are 254 hospitalised patients in Mumbai and 19 of them are on oxygen support.
Second, the doubling rate of the SARS-CoV-2 virus or the time it takes for Covid cases to double had dropped to 986 days on Tuesday from 17,101 days on April 11.
Another indicator of a surge, the overall growth rate of Covid cases, has risen from 0.04% on April 11 to 0.07% on Tuesday.
Public health officials and doctors from the private sector said there is no reason to panic as the main variant in circulation is still Omicron, which had caused the third wave between December 2021 and January 2022.
One of the main reasons for Tuesday’s rise is more testing. While testing had dropped to between 5,000 and 6,000 in Mumbai, a total of 17,145 tests were conducted to find the 1,242 cases on Tuesday.
“We are testing more because there are more cases,” said BMC executive health officer Dr Mangala Gomare. The test positivity rate that was almost 10% on Monday dropped to 7.2% on Tuesday due to higher number of tests. At the height of the Omicron wave, daily testing in the city had reached between 50,000 and 70,000.
Across Maharashtra, too, testing increased to 35,694 on Tuesday, up from 15,988 on Monday and 25,994 on Sunday.
The Union health ministry had last week directed the state to increase testing and contact tracing to check the spurt. While results of the whole genomic sequencing for Mumbai are still awaited, doctors said the rising number of cases indicates that the newer Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5 are present in Mumbai as well.