With 88,000 fresh COVID-19 infections in March, Mumbai saw 475% rise in cases in a month

The entire state of Maharashtra (including Mumbai) has witnessed a resurgence in coronavirus crisis since February 2021 (Representative image)

Maharashtra’s capital Mumbai added 88,710 new coronavirus cases in March 2021, which is nearly 475 percent more than February’s infection count, data released by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has revealed. The city had reported 18,359 COVID-19 cases in February and 16,328 in January this year.

This means that there were 70,351 more cases in Mumbai in March as compared to the previous month and 72,382 more cases as compared to the tally in January. As per the data, the virus claimed 216 lives in the financial capital of the country in March, a rise of around 181 per cent as compared to the death toll of 119 in February.

A total of 237 deaths were reported in the first month of this year. On March 31, the COVID-19 caseload of the metropolis touched 4,14,714, while the death toll reached 11,686.

The BMC data showed that there were 51,411 active cases of COVID-19 as on March 31, while this number was 9,715 by the end of February. With the spike in COVID-19 cases, Mumbai’s recovery rate went down to 85 per cent by March end, from 93 per cent recorded by the end of the previous month.

The city’s COVID-19 growth rate also worsened to 1.37 per cent by March end from just 0.28 per cent recorded by the end of February. Its case doubling rate also went down to 49 days from 245 days in this period, the data revealed. The daily COVID-19 case count in Mumbai witnessed a significant jump from mid-February, although there was no substantial rise in the number of deaths at that time.

However, the number of fatalities started growing from last week. Meanwhile, over 11.52 lakh doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered to people, including health workers and frontline workers, in the city so far.

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