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 reports, 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. All ILI and SARI patients visiting the outdoor patient departments will be screened for Covid-19,” 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.
Dr Hasnabad added that they are also taking an undertaking from the building secretary where positive cases are found to screen other society members for Covid-19 symptoms. “If anyone has symptoms, we test the person there itself. We have seen a reluctance from people in getting tested by BMC. In such cases, we ensure they get themselves tested from a private laboratory,” she added.
A medical officer from the M/W ward, where the doubling rate is 281 days, said they are concentrating on vaccination too 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 Prajakta Amberkar, medical officer, A ward said 92% of the people who tested positive in their ward are from high rises. “We have written to all high rises to get all symptomatic members tested for Covid-19. It has been an observation that 60% of the cases are symptomatic. Earlier, people in this ward used to get tested if they had travel plans. Now, there is awareness and they are getting tested because of symptoms,” she explained.
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.
“We should be looking into the profile of the people who are hospitalised. If more young people are getting hospitalised who do not have co-morbidities, then we don’t need to worry. At present, the omicron variant and its sublineages are taking an average of 3-4 days to recover, which is half of the time required to recover from a common cold,” he said.