Covid-19 cases in Mumbai explode, but tests are stagnant

A swab sample being collected at Dadar station on Tuesday. Pic/Suresh Karkera

Despite the alarming rise in Covid-19 cases in Mumbai in the past few days, the real numbers in the city could be much larger. The reason: the number of tests being conducted has hovered around the 47,000-mark, sending the test positivity ratio from 5 per cent to 22 during this period.

TPR was 0.08 per cent on Dec 1

The city's TPR stood at 0.08 per cent on December 1. As cases began surging from December 20, the TPR rose sharply. As per the World Health Organisation, if an area sees a TPR of more than 5 per cent, it is an indication that the virus is spreading faster than the growth seen in confirmed cases. Mumbai's TPR has already crossed the 10 per cent yardstick set by the Indian Council of Medical Research for the same conclusion.

Of the 47,000 tests being done daily for the past week, about 14,000 are antigen and the remaining are RT-PCR, mostly done by the private labs. Though the cases got doubled within two to three days, the testing was not ramped up.

"Private labs can increase testing by taking swabs. But they have to give reports within 24 hours. Now we are getting a few calls from people complaining that they are not getting results within 24 hours," said a health official from the BMC. He added that the labs had submitted their capacity of testing, but the time has come to reassess their capacity as the number of tests is stagnant.

Another ward-level health official told mid-day, "The cases first emerged in skyscrapers where people got themselves, their maids and drivers tested. Now as the cases have begun rising in middle-class localities and slums, people are not ready to do tests and sit at home. Instead, they have started taking medicines from nearby private doctors."

‘People are in denial'

"People are thinking that the symptoms are mild and are in denial. But the variant is new and the situation may change in the future. So people should come forward and do testing and take appropriate treatment. On the other hand, if people started doing testing voluntarily, do we have a system to test them all? We know many labs which are overburdened and have to refuse to test as the reporting deadline is 24 hours," said Dr Suhas Pingle, president of Indian Medical Association, Maharashtra state.

As per a senior BMC official, there is no dearth of testing infrastructure in Mumbai. "The combined capacity to conduct RT-PCR tests of all the private and government labs is more than 1 lakh. Even we are conducting antigen tests," said Dr Pranita Tipre, health officer of the BMC and in charge of testing in the city.

"We are focusing on testing close contacts and high-risk contacts and maybe it's the reason for the high positivity rate. If we started random testing then the TPR may decrease but it will increase the spread of the virus," said Suresh Kakani. He added that there are cases of viral flu also and people may confuse it with the Covid. "We have already given instructions to private doctors to advise patients for Covid testing." Meanwhile, BMC said it will seal a building if 20 per cent of the flats have at least 1 case each, but it should be collectively over 10.