Mumbai logs 700 Covid-19 cases, its lowest in 77 days

MUMBAI: The city on Tuesday logged 700 new cases, its lowest in 77 days. BMC commissioner IS Chahal had earlier said it was the lowest daily addition in 100 days, but later corrected it. In another positive sign for the city, active cases dropped below 20,000 for the first time since May 29.
Meanwhile, the state tally neared the 4-lakh mark, with 7,717 new cases. The state also added 282 fresh deaths— 55 of them in Mumbai.

Chahal said, “Today we have only 700 positive cases in Mumbai. And this is despite our daily testing numbers touching 8,776, which was also the highest ever.” The city’s testing rate has now reached 38,004 per million, which is one of the highest in the country. It, however, is still behind Delhi (50,435).

The last time the city had added fewer than 700 cases was on May 12 (426). The very next day, the daily addition jumped to 800 and was on the rise until recently.
The last time Mumbai had a daily addition in the range of 700 cases was on July 7 when 785 cases were registered, but the respite was short-lived as cases returned to the level of thousands thereafter. Daily additions entered the range of 1,000 cases sometime in mid-May, which now experts say is when the city had started seeing a peak.
On May 17, Mumbai for the first time had reported 1,000-plus cases (1,595) and continued to do so till June 16 when there were 935 cases. Since then the cases had largely hovered between 1,200 and 1,700, even rising to 2,077 on June 27. A steady decline has been seen since the past fortnight with cases hovering between 1,000 and 1,200. According to BMC, the overall growth rate of Covid cases in Mumbai between July 21 and July 27 was 1.02%.