BMC TO CLOSELY MONITOR WARDS WITH SLIDING DOUBLING RATE
MUMBAI: While the city has seen a marginal dip in Covid-19 cases on Friday, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is keeping a close watch on four civic wards that have reported poor doubling rates than the city’s rate of 399 days.
According to the BMC, the four wards -- M/E (Chembur-e), H/W (Bandra), M/W (Chembur-w) and A (Colaba) -- have seen declining doubling rates and presently it stands below 298 days. The doubling rate is an indicator of how quickly cases are increasing. On Friday, Mumbai reported 2,255 cases and two deaths. The city’s test positivity rate is 15.39%.
“We have instructed ward officers to improve surveillance and testing. We have also asked them to check if people are testing positive in clusters,” said Dr Mangala Gomare, executive health officer, BMC.
She said they have also been instructed to keep an eye on hospitalisations.
Dr Gomare added that health officers of all the wards have been directed to screen patients with influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) for Covid-19. “Our emphasis continues to be on the three Ts i.e testing, tracing and treatment,” she said.
Dr Ujwala Hasnabad, assistant medical officer of the H/W ward that has a doubling rate of 275 days, said they are focusing on more testing. “We have increased testing. Our team is visiting every positive case and testing high-risk contacts,” she said.
A medical officer from the M/W ward, where the doubling rate is 281 days, said they are concentrating on vaccination apart from testing and contact tracing.
“Vaccination can give us immunity and safeguard us from the severity of the disease. We are getting in touch with people who are eligible for the booster dose or who have missed their second dose and counselling them to get jabbed for their safety,” he said.
Dr Amitav Banerjee, epidemiologist and head of community medicine, Dr DY Patil Medical College, Pune, said compared to the start of the pandemic, where the focus was on people testing positive, the worrisome indicators should be the number of people hospitalised and in intensive care unit and ventilator.