In what comes as a silver lining during the pandemic, the city has recorded a 58.39 per cent drop in the number of active Covid cases in the last 10 days. According to the statistics, there were 8,888 active cases until February 1, which dropped further to 3,698 till February 10. Civic 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, officials said, have played a vital role in bringing down the number of cases. Moreover, they were focusing on critical patients, increasing the number of testing which helped them to curb the daily cases and deaths.
Dr Maharudra Kumbhar, the officer on special duty at SevenHills Hospital said there are several factors that have led to a drop in the covid active cases in Mumbai and vaccination has played an important role. “A load of active cases has reduced along with that positivity and the covid fatality rate has also come down. Moreover, during the third wave most of the patients were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms 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 main focus has been to reduce the daily numbers and bring deaths to a single digit. 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.
Health experts have urged citizens to adhere to covid norms despite there is a drop in the daily covid active cases as the virus is still in the community and people are getting contracted. “We need to follow covid norms by wearing masks for more than six to seven months as the virus has spread in the community and still we are getting patients with delta, delta derivatives and Omicron variants. Moreover, people who are partially vaccinated should get vaccinated as soon as their dates are near,” said a doctor from the civic-run hospital.
Despite the decline in cases, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has maintained that it will monitor cases till February end before taking any decision on lifting all restrictions in the city. “There are no plans for lifting complete restrictions in the city yet. We will monitor case trends for the coming weeks before taking any call,” added Kakani.
Officials said increasing vaccine coverage was encouraging. The BMC is taking various steps to do so, including telephoning 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 had missed their dose.
