In 4 days of June, Mumbai Covid cases double the March tally

MUMBAI: The Covid-19 caseload on the first four days of June underlines the rapidly rising Covid graph in Maharashtra and Mumbai. The June tally so far for the city is 3,095, which is double the entire caseload for March (1,519), almost 60% of the April cases (1,795) and over 50% of the May burden (5,838).
Mumbai accounts for over 60% of cases in Maharashtra, which has in June registered 4,618 cases — more than 50% of the state’s entire May tally of 9,185.
On Saturday, the state registered its highest tally in three months with 1,357 cases, including 889 in Mumbai. A senior citizen died in Mumbai, taking the toll in June so far to two.
“There is a rise in cases and we need to be cautious, but this isn’t the fourth wave,” said state public health department’s surveillance officer, Pradip Awate.
He said Delhi too had seen a rapid rise in cases in April, but daily caseload is now back to three digits. “The caseload may rise for the next four to five weeks, but will then stabilise and start dropping again,” he said. Awate said the three-page letter sent from the state public health department to various district and civic corporations on Friday was a matter of routine to stay prepared for any rise.
The main reason doctors are not worried about the fourth wave right now is that the Covid variant in circulation is still Omicron.
“Genomic sequencing throughout the country has shown Omicron and, while newer sub-lineages are being detected, it is still the same variant,” said a doctor from a BMC hospital. BMC executive health officer Mangala Gomare said Mumbai had registered over 20,000 cases in a single day on January 7. “It is unlikely that the same variant can cause such a huge rise again,” she added.
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While newer sublineages of Omicron-Covid, BA.4 and BA.5, were detected in Pune last week, the results of genomic sequencing of 550 samples from Mumbai are awaited. In a letter sent on Friday, state additional chief secretary (health) Pradeep Vyas had asked the district and civic administrations to carry out surveillance of flu-like and respiratory illness cases and advised for use of masks in order to check the spread of the viral fever.