Covid cases make a move towards rural areas

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Mumbai The surge of Covid cases has now shifted to the rural and semi-urban parts from big cities like Mumbai. Cases in Central, north Maharashtra and Vidarbha, the regions with the dominant rural population, have reported an almost two to four-fold surge in the last one week, while the cases in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) have reduced to 50% of the daily caseload.

Meanwhile, keeping its trend of reporting a daily caseload of over 40,000 cases for the last four days, the state clogged 42,462 new infections on Saturday taking the tally to 7,170,483, and the death toll to 141779 after reported 23 deaths n the last 24 hours.

Mumbai logged 10,661 new cases and 11 new deaths taking the tally to 9,91,314 and toll to 16,446. 125 new Omicron cases were reported on Saturday, taking the tally to 1,730. Of the total Omicron cases, 879 have been discharged following a negative RT-PCR test.

Similar to the trend witnessed in the first two waves, the third wave surge initiated in Mumbai, other cities in MMR and Pune has shifted to the smaller cities and rural parts. The contribution of these areas in the total caseload three weeks ago, on December 31, was more than 92% (7,440 of 8,067), while it fell to 74.24% (32,084 of 43,211) on January 14. The contribution of cases in MMR dropped substantially to almost half of the state tally in a week as MMR tally on January 14 was 22,037 of state tally of 43,211 from over 80% or 33,235 of state tally of 40,925 on January 7.

While Mumbai and other MMR cities such as Thane, Navi Mumbai, Mira-Bhayander, Kalyan-Dombivali have reported a substantial drop in the cases over the last seven days, other states cities including Pune, Nashik, Nagpur, Aurangabad and rural areas reported markable surges. Cases in districts like Pune (4,437 to 10,047), Nagpur (697 to 1,698), Nashik (810 to 1,939), Aurangabad (158 to 657) rose significantly in the last one week between January 7 and 14.

On Saturday, Pune district logged 10,197, the second-highest in the state after Mumbai. Nagpur and Nashik districts reported 2,134 and 1,915 cases respectively.

Dr Subhash Salunkhe, a member of the union government-appointed task force said that the cases in the rural parts of the state will keep rising over the next few weeks. “As seen in the first two waves, the surge will shift from the metropolis to other parts in phases. It started from Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru and spread to other smaller cities. I do not think Mumbai has attained its peak and it could be in the next 8-10 days.”

Dr Salunkhe said that there could be more migration to cities during this wave because the cases and hospitalisation in rural parts will be more than in urban parts. “The vaccination rate in cities like Mumbai and Pune is fabulous, so is the ramping up of the health infrastructure. On the contrary, many rural areas lag on both fronts. This will result in more hospitalisation in rural areas, though severity will remain low compared to the earlier wave. As such there will be migration of the patients for the hospitalisation from rural areas where the health infrastructure has been augmented significantly,” he added.

According to an official from the health department, even the rural areas have been prepared to tackle the third wave surge. He said that all the district collectors have been directed to increase the vaccination rate and simultaneously get the health machinery prepared. The officer said that the staggered surge in the cases will help them in handling the pressure on health infrastructure by concentrating on areas with high cases.

The daily positivity rate in the state stood at 21.21% while the daily case fatality rate reported was 0.054%. State’s overall CFR stands at 1.97%, while recovery rate stands at 94.28%.


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