Even as India witnesses a downward trend in Covid-19 cases, medics in Mumbai and Maharashtra have expressed concern over the slow tapering of the second Covid-19 wave in the state.
Deliberating on the issue, a senior Mantralaya official told TOI that most states, which saw a severe second wave such as Delhi and Karnataka are recording low covid infections now except Maharashtra which is still oscillating between 8,000 to 10,000 cases every day.
While some doctors in Mumbai contended that cases in the capital city might never go below 600 as opposed to 300 plus cases reported at the end of the first wave in December-January. ‘ Local numbers may never dip below 600 and even if they do, it might last for only a few days,’ a senior official was quoted saying.
Experts have attributed a number of reasons behind this stagnant decline in cases. Some believe that it is due to the accurate reporting of Covid data to the size of the state to the density of the population, while others are of the opinion that it is due to the different “peaking time” for different districts in Maharashtra.
“When cases in the first-hit districts reached a plateau, cases in others began to peak,” said a senior official told TOI. At present, the official said that six districts namely Kolhapur, Sangli, Sindhudurg, and Osmanabad are at a peak and account for 60 percent of the total reported Covid-19 cases.
Statistics released by Western Railway show that 28 lakh people returned to Maharashtra, including 7.8 lakh to Mumbai in the May-June period. BMC additional commissioner Suresh Kakani said that the huge population of the state or ‘floating population’ may also be a reason behind this slow tapering of Covid second wave.
Among other possibilities, a doctor from a govt hospital noted that an average number of tests conducted in the state could also be attributed to this phenomenon. The lowest daily caseload during the first wave was 1,842 around January, however, the number of daily tests at that time was also around a third of the present count.
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