MUMBAI: New Covid cases stayed below 10,000 in the state for the second day while the daily case tally as well as the total tally dropped in the city on Friday.
The city’s Friday caseload was 693 — lower than Thursday (773) and Wednesday (864) — and the overall total fell by 4,467 to 7.2 lakh so far.
“Due to shifting of cases (to different municipal areas) as per the patient’s residential address and omission of duplicates, Mumbai’s tally dropped by 4,467 cases,” said state epidemiology head Dr Pradeep Awate.
The reconciliation exercise also resulted in the state’s overall tally dropping by 73 to 60.2 lakh cases so far.
On Friday, the state added 9,677 cases and 156 fatalities — under 200 for the sixth day.
With the addition of 355 unreported deaths, the toll rose to 1.2 lakh.
Daily deaths in Mumbai, however, increased to 23 from 10 on Thursday, taking the toll to 15,368, said BMC officials.
Dr Rahul Pandit, head of intensive care in Fortis Hospital and a member of the Covid task force, said there is no cause for concern as the daily positivity rate and case fatality rate are low in the city.
Health minister Rajesh Tope said although the cases in the state were dipping, the decline is not as fast as it should be.
“Cases have stagnated and are fluctuating between 8,000 and 10,000.
We were hoping for them to dip further but it is taking longer than we expected,” said Tope.
State government officials said districts have been asked to ramp up testing after it was reported that testing had dropped in nearly 15 districts.
“We have asked the districts to ensure that testing does not drop and the focus should be on increasing the percentage of the RT-PCR tests,” said the official.