At 1,167, Mumbai sees second highest Covid cases in a day

ON WEDNESDAY, CITY’S CASE TALLY STOOD AT 321,699 AND DEATH TOLL AT 11,458 WITH FOUR NEW DEATHS

MUMBAI: The city on Wednesday recorded 1,167 new cases of Covid-19, crossing the 1,000 cases mark for the first time since November 2020. The highest number of Covid-19 cases reported in a day so far was 1,354 on October 28, 2020.

With Wednesday seeing the second-highest number of cases reported in a single day, Mumbai’s Covid tally has now reached 321,699. The city also recorded four deaths from Covid-19 on Wednesday, taking the toll to 11,458, with a case fatality rate of 3.9%. The number of active cases is 6,900 on Wednesday and the recovery rate is 94%. On Tuesday, Mumbai conducted 21,113 tests for Covid-19. So far, 3,185,334 tests have been conducted since the beginning of the outbreak.

Barring the occasional dip, there has been a noticeable rise in the number of reported cases with over 700 cases being reported on most days of the past week for the first time since December 2020. There were a handful of days in November 2020 when Mumbai had recorded over 1,000 new Covid-19 cases, with the highest on November 28, 2020 (1,147 cases). Since then, the daily tally had not crossed 1,000 till Wednesday.

However, the doubling rate of Covid-19 in Mumbai has reduced to 294 days, compared to last week when it was 393 days on Friday and 417 days on Thursday. Doubling rate is the time needed for the present number of cases to double. The average growth rate of Covid-19 went up to 0.24% on Wednesday, compared to last week when it was 0.18% on Friday and 0.17% on Thursday.

On Tuesday, during a review meeting with municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray directed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to ensure medical facilities in the city were prepared to deal with a spike in reported cases. As of Wednesday, Mumbai has 13,119 beds for symptomatic or serious cases of Covid-19; 1,554 ICU beds; 940 ventilator beds; and 8,013 beds with oxygen points.

Last Thursday, Chahal had directed BMC to tighten containment zones by sealing buildings with more than five cases of Covid-19. He also directed BMC to crack down on those who do not wear mask and/or violate home quarantine rules if they are highrisk contacts of Covid-positive patients. Chahal said the number of clean up marshals should be doubled from 2,400 to 4,800.