Covid-19: Mumbai reports 206 pc increase in active cases in 14 days in March

Almost three years after Covid19 took over the world Mumbai has seen a recent spike in cases It has recorded a 206 per cent rise in active Covid19 cases in past 14 days While Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC reported 47 active Covid19 cases on March 1 the number increased to 147 active cases on March 14Incidentally March 14 also reported the highest number of positive cases 36 cases for this month so far Of which 34 cases are asymptomatic and two patients have been hospitalisedInterestingly the BMC has reduced the number of beds in the past 14 days While the number of beds available for Covid19 on March 1 was 4438 the number of beds reduced to 4351 on March 14Out of the total active cases in Maharashtra 662 cases highest number of active cases ie 31 per cent 206 cases are from Pune second highest at 2175 per cent of the cases ie 144 cases are from Mumbai followed by Thane 1480 per cent98 casesWhy are cases increasingSpeaking about the increase in the number of Covid19 cases Dr Samrat Shah consultant internist at Bhatia Hospital said ldquoThere is surely an increase in the number of Covid cases in the OPD In a heavy OPD where I see around 30 to 40 patients in a day approximately five patients turn out to have Covid On nasal swabs in the present scenario all viral respiratory illnesses be it influenza A H3N2 H1N1 variant and novel Covid19 Omicron subvariants are steadily increasing the cause could be host and environmental factors Environmental factors contribute to poor air quality and too much construction all around the city All respiratory illnesses are highly transmissiblerdquoAlso Read Singleday rise of over 600 Covid cases after 117 daysHe added ldquoOne of the major differences is H3N2 has a shorter incubation period than Covid Symptoms are same in both fever headache sore throat persistent cough diarrhoea low backaches with Covid and Influenza viruses The H3N2 is antigenic drift and a mild mutation but is not lifethreatening Nasal swabs are the only way to differentiate one from the other In the respective clinical spectrums there is more suffering with H1N1 and H3N2 whereas Covid symptoms barely last for two days and the patient is back to normal in the next three to four daysrdquoNumber of cases in MaharashtraMeanwhile Maharashtra reported 155 new cases and two deaths due to Covid19 on March 14The state is screening international passengers arriving at Mumbai Pune and Nagpur airports since December 24 2022 All passengers are being thermally scanned and two per cent random samples are taken for Covid testingOut of the tests done so far 39 RTPCRpositive patients have been reported till date Eight of them are from Mumbai seven from Pune one each from Navi Mumbai Amravati Sangli Aurangabad and Satara in Maharashtra Others are from different states including five from Gujarat three from Uttar Pradesh two each from Kerala Tamil Nadu Rajasthan and Odisha and one each from Goa Assam and Telangana