The overall average growth rate of the infection in Mumbai stood at 0.149 per cent.The test positivity rate (TPR) —the number of positive cases of coronavirus infection out of the total tests conducted in Mumbai — shot up to 15.58 per cent on Tuesday, the highest since January this year.
On Monday, Mumbai had recorded 1,118 new Covid-19 cases out of the 9,622 tests conducted, taking the TPR to 11.61 per cent. Within 24 hours, the daily cases surged by 54 per cent as the city reported 1,724 new Covid-19 cases out of the 11,065 tests conducted on Tuesday.
On June 3, Dr Pradeep Vyas, additional chief secretary, had written a letter to district administrations, urging them to boost up testing and genome sequencing. But over 10 days later, average testing has remained low at approximately 10,000 tests conducted daily. At the beginning of the third wave of Covid-19 infections in December last year, nearly 35,000 tests were being conducted in Mumbai daily.
However, civic officials claimed that the high positivity rate was because of targeted testing by hospitals. “Earlier, we were randomly testing the floating population from railway stations, markets and airports. Now, most of the samples are being collected from hospitals where the positivity will be more than random testing,” said an officer from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
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Due to mild severity, 98 per cent of the beds are vacant in Mumbai. As on June 14, out of the 4,751 beds with oxygen facilities, 33 were occupied. Similarly, out of the 1,523 beds in ICU, only 53 had patients.
“The Omicron wave of infections has remained milder than all the previous waves of Covid-19. Since the infection is restricted to the upper respiratory system and can be treated effectively, infection spread is likely to be short-lived and mild,” said Dr Rahul Tambe, senior consultant of internal medicine and infectious disease, Nanavati Hospital.
The overall average growth rate of the infection in Mumbai stood at 0.149 per cent. Out of the 24 wards in Mumbai, 12 saw a growth rate higher than the city average. The M-East ward, which covers areas around Chembur, topped the chart with a growth rate of 0.231 per cent.
Meanwhile, a day after recording 1,885 new Covid-19 cases, the daily tally of new cases in Maharashtra rose to 2,956, with four deaths due to the infection.
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