Mumbai, with 5,428 cases, contributed 67.2 per cent to the state’s tally of 8,067 cases on Friday, as per the data of the state government.
Fifty-five per cent of the sequenced Covid-19 positive samples in Mumbai have been detected with the new variant Omicron
he Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said on Friday. This substantiates the claims of community transmission of Omicron, leading to the beginning of the third wave in Maharashtra.
Mumbai, with 5,428 cases, contributed 67.2 per cent to the state’s tally of 8,067 cases on Friday, as per the data of the state government. The figures released by the BMC, meanwhile, said that Mumbai on Friday reported 5,631 Covid-19 cases.
The difference in BMC’s and state’s Covid-19 figures is due to the delay on part of the civic body to register data on the centralised Covid-19 server.
Omicron has started dominating over the Delta Variant in the city – which has now turned into the epicentre of the third wave – by recording the highest number of Covid-19 cases in India.
In the seventh genome sequencing conducted in the city, the BMC-run Kasturba Gandhi Hospital tested 282 samples. Among them, 156 samples (55 per cent) were detected with Omicron variant, followed by 89 samples (32 per cent) with Delta derivatives and 37 (13 per cent) with Delta variant.
Mumbai had on Thursday reported 3,555 cases, which surged by 52.6 per cent on Friday. One death was also reported on Friday. The test positive rate (TPR) – total number of positive samples detected among the total samples tested – was over 11 per cent.
Dr Shashank Joshi, a member of the state Covid task force, said this surge in cases was expected due to the high transmission rate of Omicron, which is more than its predecessor Delta variant.
“The same trend has been observed across the globe. In South Africa, within a week, Omicron dominated over the Delta variants. This will further spread across the state. But considering the less severity observed among patients, it can be a silver lining,” he added.
Of the 5,631 patients who tested positive in Mumbai on Friday as per BMC data, 4,223 were asymptomatic. Only 497 of them required hospitalisation. As of Friday, only 7.8 per cent of the beds were occupied in the city.
Source: Indian Express Report