Mumbai: COVID-19 cases down but so are the tests, say officials

Experts have stressed on lowering the city’s TPR to below five per cent. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi

While cases in the city have come down, the tests have, too. From 50,000 daily, they have reduced to barely 40,000 in the past two weeks. The city saw only 28,000 tests on Monday and 30,000 on Tuesday. Sources said that this could be owing to the laboratories being stretched to the limit and that a higher number of tests was also leading to delayed test results.

According to the civic body's dashboard, there were about 56,000 tests reported on April 13, the highest mark for the city so far, after which the number started dropping. Before March, the number of tests was hardly 20,000. This doubled amid the second wave. The city recorded 3,876 cases on Monday and 4,014 cases on Tuesday.

Even as the BMC emphasised on doing more tests and getting results in 24 hours, earlier this month, the same does not seem to be happening on the ground. Sources attributed this to overburdened labs and a delayed turnaround time of reports. A civic official said, "There could be multiple reasons for the drop in numbers - either there are more asymptomatic people who are not getting tested or laboratories may be stretched amid the pressure to give reports within 24 hours. When there is a higher number of tests, a delay is noticed in getting reports. This further delays treatment."

However, experts claimed that the focus needs to be on Test Positivity Rate (TPR) as it has to be below five per cent. However, currently, it is hovering around 15 per cent. TPR is the number of positives per 100 tests. Experts of the state task force said that the city is far from its target of achieving a TPR below five.

Dr Shashank Joshi, a member of the State Task Force, too, had told mid-day that it was important to focus on the TPR, which was 28 per cent earlier this month.

56k
No. of tests on April 13, the highest test tally for city so far