COVID-19: Mumbai's 70-day hard work to curb cases wiped out in 10 days flat

What Mumbai gained over the last two months it has lost in the short span of 10 days It took 70 days for the city to come down from 800 COVID19 cases daily to 400 But it reversed the process almost quickly this week recording 897 cases on Saturday the highest since November 29Other cities in the MMR region like Thane 147 Navi Mumbai 116 and KalyanDombivli 145 also reported a higher number of cases compared to earlier weeks The mortality rate in Mumbai however continues to be stable with three deaths reported on SaturdayAt its peak in September last year the city was witnessing an average of 2000 COVID19 cases daily By November when theatres and other public spaces were slowly opening up the cases had halved The numbers started dropping slowly in December with Mumbai reporting around 750 cases daily in the first week and 600 in the last week The trend continued in January and by the last week the average number of cases stood at 500 At the time experts from the COVID19 task force cautioned that it would take a long time for cases to decrease further and even warned about a second waveIt seems like their fears have finally come true with the daily average slowly nearing the 1000mark On February 8 a week after local trains had been opened to public the city reported 375 cases The very next day cases jumped to 558 By February 14 daily cases rose to 645mdashthe same as a month ago on January 8 On Friday the cases hit 823 which was way higher than what was reported on December 4 ldquoThe social behaviour of the public is not appropriate to restrict the spread of the virus Steps should be taken at the personal community as well as government levelrdquo said Dr Rahul Pandit an expert in the task forceldquoIt is a peculiar character of COVID19mdashthe virus spreads with great speedrdquo said Ajitkumar Ambi assistant commissioner of N ward consisting Ghatkopar adding ldquoAs per the order we are now sealing buildings where more than five patients have been reported We are also applying strict quarantine rules to restrict the speed of the virusrdquoThe rest of the state however hasnrsquot shown a significant spike except for Amravati district which registered 806 cases taking the statersquos tally to 6281 Of the 40 deaths reported in the state six were from Amravati and five in Yavatmal A lockdown was imposed in Amravati and the neighbouring Yavatmal district for the weekend with restriction on various activities2093913Total no of cases in Maharashtra318207Total no of cases in Mumbai897Total new cases in Mumbai on SaturdayReverse trendFebruary 12 599 January 14 607February 14 645 January 8 654February 17 721 January 6 795February 19 823 December 4 813February 20 897 November 29 940