Mumbai: Here’s news that will leave people enthused—there has been a 58.93 per cent drop in the number of new cases in the city in the last 10 days. There were 8,888 active cases until February 1, which dropped further to 3,698 till February 10, according to civic records. Officials have attributed this drop to a number of factors like the implementation of restrictions, decrease in the virulence of viruses and the ‘Breaking the Chain’ mission. These factors have played a vital role in bringing down the number of cases. Authorities have also focused on critical patients and increased testing, which they claim has helped curb the daily cases and deaths.
Dr Maharudra Kumbhar, Officer on Special Duty at the SevenHills Hospital said there were several factors that had led to the drop in the active Covid cases in Mumbai and vaccination has played an important role. “The load of active cases has reduced and along with that, positivity and the Covid fatality rate has also come down. Moreover, in the third wave, most patients were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, from which they were recovering in three to four days,” he said.
Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani said the civic body has stringently implemented ‘Mission Save Lives’ in the city. “Our focus has been to reduce the daily numbers and bring deaths down to single digits. We had massive jumbo facilities with ample oxygen storage that helped during the second wave, when the number of cases was much higher,” he said.
However, health experts have urged citizens to adhere to Covid norms despite this drop in the daily caseload, as the virus is still around in the community and people are continuing to contract the infection. “We need to follow Covid norms and masks will have to be worn for more than six to seven months, as there is community spread of the virus and we continue to get patients infected with Delta, Delta derivatives and Omicron variants. Importantly, people who are partially vaccinated should get vaccinated as soon as their dates are near,” said a doctor from a civic-run hospital.
Despite the decline in cases, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has maintained that it will be monitoring cases till February-end before deciding on entirely lifting restrictions in the city. “There are no plans to completely lift restrictions in the city yet. We will be monitoring case trends in the coming weeks before taking a call,” Kakani said.
Officials said the increasing vaccine coverage was encouraging. The BMC is taking various steps to do so, including calling up citizens who may have missed their second dose, holding vaccine-on-wheels camps in areas with high footfall and encouraging housing societies to keep it informed in case someone has missed their dose.
