Civic body to ramp up testing in Mumbai as Covid cases surge
MUMBAI: Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal on Friday said the civic body will meet the rise in Covid-19 cases in the city with a slew of measures including ramping up tests and vaccination, particularly, precautionary doses.
Chahal, who chaired a review meeting with members of the state Covid-19 task force, senior municipal officers, superintendents of hospitals, and various civic medical officers, said that the number of tests in the city will be increased to 40,000 per day from the current 8,000.
On Friday, the number of fresh cases was 763 and the test positivity rate (TPR) was 7.7%. Around a week ago, the TPR was around 3%; in February, the TPR was less than 1%. In the 24 hours before Friday, 9,896 tests had been carried out.
A good sign, however, remains that the number of Covid- 19 hospitalisations remain a miniscule proportion of the total available hospital beds – as things stand on Friday, only 0.56% of the city’s 24,473 beds earmarked for Covid patients were occupied.
“All civic, private and government hospitals should be prepared to tackle the situation if hospital admission increases exponentially. Apart from this, we will start a campaign to ensure all the eligible teenagers and adolescents should be vaccinated immediately,” a release issued by the BMC stated.
There are nine jumbo centres in the city —Dahisar, Malad, Goregaon, Kanjurmarg, BKC, Worli, Mahalaxmi and Richardson and Cruddas in Byculla — each of which has 3,000 beds. When the third wave receded in January, three were put on standby (Kanjurmarg, Dahisar and a portion of the BKC facility). On Friday, Chahal ordered that these be activated again after a structural audit was conducted.
Kiran Dighavkar, assistant municipal commissioner said that he has instructed the BMC war-rooms to contact all the eligible citizens and urge them for taking the precautionary dose.
“The next two weeks are going to be important. Mask behaviour should be followed and all the eligible citizens should take their vaccine immediately,” said Dr Sanjay Oak, member of the state Covid-19 task force.