MUMBAI...

Doctor) conference of family doctors on Sunday, the public health department’s additional chief secretary, Dr Pradeep Vyas, made a presentation before the medical fraternity, comprising members of the state-appointed task force. Chaired by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, the conference organised by the state government was meant for a discussion with family doctors, ahead of a potential third wave. The presentation stated that the 10 days have not seen any drop in cases, while the number of active cases during this period has slightly increased.

After clocking the weekly positivity rate below 5% in all the districts for the past few weeks, Pune and Ahmednagar have crossed the mark this week at a positivity rate of 6.58% and 5.08% respectively. Mumbai has, after three weeks, joined the top-5 group of districts, in terms of active patients.. 90.61% active patients are from ten districts, remaining five being Sangli, Solapur, Ratangiri, Kolhapur and Sindhudurg.

The state authorities have termed Pune, Ahmednagar, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Rantagiri and Sindhudurg as districts of concern. “The growth rate and weekly positivity rate in these districts are too high. Pune has clocked the highest — 6.58% positivity rate — while it’s more than 5% in Ahmednagar. With the Ganesh festival, beginning from Friday, celebrated on a large extent in these districts, there are chances of the third wave initiating or the cases in second wave increasing from these districts. The district administrations need to take utmost care in these districts,” said Dr Vyas.

Of the 44, 437 patients reported in the past 10 days, 68% or 30,313 patients are from five – Pune (22%), Ahmednagar (17%), Satara (11%), Solapur and Mumbai (9% each), while remaining (32%) patients are from 30 districts. After reporting consistently fewer cases below the 400 mark for 38 days, from July 25 to August 31, Mumbai has been reporting over 400 cases daily for the past five days. 495 new cases were reported on Sunday.

He, however, said that the second wave in 17 of the remaining districts seems to have subsided. Seven of them have less than 10 active patients, while in 11 the number of active patients ranges between 11 and 100. Most of these districts are in Vidarbha and Marathwada.

Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray said government’s priority is to avert the third wave or even if it struck the state, the endeavour would be to reduce its intensity. “We have increased the number of beds, but the question is whether we would be able to supply the oxygen required for the patients. Almost 80,000 patients during the peak of the second wave required oxygen.

Our attempt will to ensure that the requirement of the oxygen does not go beyond our local generation of 1,400 metric tonnes per day. We have been presently producing 1,400 MT a day, of which 350 MT is used for Covid and non-covid patients daily. There is a brief rise in the daily caseload in last few days, but our endeavour is to bring it down to zero,” he said. Dr Mehul Mehta, who is a senior fellow at Harvard Global Health Institute, said that masks and vaccinations were effective tools to keep the infection at the bay. He said that the southern part of the United States has been witnessing high number of cases because of low vaccination and resistance from the citizens for the Covid appropriate behaviour.

Dr Shashank Joshi, member of the state appointed task force, said that the state government is aggressively implementing vaccination drive in Dharavi, as there was possibility of the antibodies among people there to have reduced.

“During first wave, our Dharavi model was appreciated across the globe and despite the delta plus variant during the second wave, daily caseload there could not cross 20 on any given day. But the antibodies among people there is expected to have gone down in Dharavi because of which vaccination drive in Asia’s largest slum is being aggressively implemented. Masking and vaccination are two effective tools to avert the third wave or reduce its intensity. The people who have already been infected and have been fully vaccinated get their antibodies increased by double,” he said.

Dr Joshi said that there was no need to worry about C 1.2 variant found in South Africa as it has been seen in just seven countries and the number of cases of the variant is not more than 100.