In an encouraging sign, the COVID-19 test positivity rate in Mumbai has dropped below 10 per cent, municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal said on Friday.
According to Mr. Chahal, Mumbai’s positivity rate was 9.94 percent on April 29, when 4,328 people tested positive for COVID-19 out of 43,525 those samples were examined.
The test positivity rate (TPR) is defined as the proportion of samples that return positive among the total tested.
“Our positivity rate is in single-digit now with nearly 44,000 tests. Perhaps, Mumbai is the only city in India with a single-digit positivity rate with high testing," Mr. Chahal claimed.
Highlighting that 85 percent of the new cases are asymptomatic, the IAS officer said the number of vacant beds available in city hospitals increased to 5,725 on Friday afternoon, indicating a drop in fresh admissions.
According to the data provided by Mr. Chahal, who took charge of the BMC during the pandemic last year, Mumbai had a TPR of 20.85 percent in the beginning of April.
The highest positivity rate during the month was 27.94 percent, reported on April 4, when 11,573 people had tested positive after 51,313 samples were examined.
The data suggested that the test positivity rate started slipping below 20 percent from April 19.
Earlier this week, Dr Shashank Joshi, a member of the Maharashtra government’s COVID-19 task force, had said Mumbai may have turned the corner in its fight against the pandemic.
He had said the turnaround was due to the metropolis tackling the surge in cases during the second wave of the infection with the “ATM strategy", which is "Assess, Triage and Transfer, and Management".
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