Mumbai recorded 15,014 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, the highest single-day surge witnessed since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. The daily positivity rate, too, shot up to 25%.
As the spread continues, officials at the public health department expects the city to record a further daily surge in cases over the next two weeks, which may even lead to increase in hospitalisation.
With the advent of the Omicron variant, which is more transmissible than its predecessor Delta, the active Covid-19 cases have surged over 30 times in a month– from 1,922 cases recorded on December 1, 2021 to 61,923 on Wednesday.
However, a bulk of the cases are asymptomatic. According to the data provided by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), out of the 15,166 new cases recorded on Wednesday in Mumbai, 13,195 are asymptomatic (87%) whereas 1,218 patients have been admitted in hospitals.
The differences in the daily Covid-19 cases of BMC and the state is because of the delay in updation of data to the centralised server. An analysis of the data shows that in the last five days, hospitalisation among those infected has increased by 84.9%. While on January 1, the city had 2,760 patients admitted in hospitals, it increased to 5,104 as of Wednesday. This number is set to rise over the next couple of weeks in line with the daily rise in cases.
“We cannot predict the highest one-day surge the city can record in the third wave but there will be further surge till January 15. Considering today’s surge in cases compared to Tuesday, which is over 40%, we can expect 20,000 cases tomorrow (Thursday),” said Suresh Kakani, additional commissioner, BMC.
With the reporting of 26,538 cases in Maharashtra on Wednesday, the total number of active cases has flared up to 87,505. As on January 1, this stood at 32,225 cases.
