Even as Mumbai reported record 20,181 fresh COVID-19 cases on January 6, the country’s financial capital has no plans to impose a lockdown.
The city has no plans to shut down even as the cases continue to surge, Bloomberg News reported, quoting Mumbai’s Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal.
“Mumbai has already banned large gatherings and also put restrictions on the number of people that can attend events. No lockdown and no further restrictions are planned even if cases were to rise,” Chahal told Bloomberg News in an interview.
Among the newly reported cases, only 5 percent of patients required medical help and most recovered faster. Most patients who needed medical help were were not vaccinated, the report said.
“Yesterday, we got more than 15,000 cases. Of this only 80 patients went on oxygen beds and only around 35” needed intensive care, the report said quoting Chahal. “There is no case for a lockdown.”
He added: “Even if we get 40,000 cases or more per day which may happen in the next few days, we can manage the situation, there won’t be an oxygen shortage or even a lockdown. This is simply because only a small percentage of people need hospital beds or oxygen.”
Chahal told media that the only people needing oxygen or hospitalisation were those who were not vaccinated or having several comorbidities and were old. This was the reason why he had spoken against a lockdown during the last Covid review meeting, he added. “Our positivity rate today is higher at 12% than the second wave last year when it was just 5%, yet we not seeing as many people falling seriously ill. In the last 16 to 17 days, we have 16 deaths; that is one death per day, in spite of thousands of cases per day,” Chahal said.
The commissioner said the South African model showed that cases peaked and began dropping in five-six weeks. Mumbai is in its third week, and he believed by January 15 the case could reach 40,000 and above, Chahal said.
