Covid cases rise over two-fold in Mumbai & Maharashtra over past week

MUMBAI: Covid-19 cases more than doubled in the last week, with Mumbai’s weekly tally crossing 10,047 on Saturday.
In the week between May 29 and June 4, the city had registered only 4,294 cases. The statistics for Maharashtra are not different: the state registered 15,998 cases in the week ending June 11 (Saturday) as against the previous week’s tally of 6,308 cases.
On Saturday, the state, after counting over 3,000 cases on Friday, saw a slight drop with 2,992 cases. Mumbai’s caseload on Saturday dropped 10% to 1,745 cases as compared to the previous day.
The city saw its second death in a week on Saturday, when a 70-year-old man with diabetes succumbed to Covid-related complications.
State surveillance officer Dr Pradip Awate said another case of BA.5 sub-lineage of Omicron was detected in Pune. The patient, a 37-year-old man, had returned from England on May 21 and was diagnosed with Covid on June 2. “He was in home isolation,” the doctor added. This is the ninth case of BA.4/BA.5 sub-lineages detected in Pune.
The number of hospitalisations rose from 54 on Monday (June 6) to 99 admissions on Saturday. Of these 99 single-day admissions, 11 are on oxygen support. Totally, there are 389 patients in the city’s various hospitals, with 34 needing oxygen support.
“While hospitalisations are rising, these numbers are nowhere near the admissions in the previous wave. There is no need to panic,” said a civic official.
However, an intensivist in a private hospital said Covid ICUs have “reopened” with admissions trickling in for intensive care. Another doctor with a suburban hospital said there are three ICU admissions.
A senior doctor in a hospital in the eastern suburbs said a kidney transplant patient was kept in ICU “but more for observation than severity of Covid infection”.
Dr Rahul Pandit, a member of the state’s Covid taskforce, said, “There has been a significant rise in number of Covid patients in the city, but most are still asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic.’’
Dr Shashank Joshi, also a member of the taskforce, said the surge “isn’t the fourth wave yet”. Mumbai is seeing a cluster outbreak in communities, he said. “It is six months since the Omicron outbreak in Mumbai and people have lost some of the hybrid immunity they gained from vaccination and infection, leading to the surge,’’ he said.
The main task, he said, is to ensure that the present surge doesn’t become the fourth wave. “If we can take measures to mitigate the surge, we may not witness a further explosion in numbers or hospitalisation,” he said.
Dr Pandit said the surge in Mumbai would continue for four or five weeks. “However, the Omicron wave was only four-weeks long, so this too may peter out in the next three weeks,’’ he added.