COVID-19 concerns loom as festival season begins

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MUMBAI

Ahead of the festival season, which begins on Monday with Janmashtami, a sense of deja vu has gripped the city’s public healthcare experts and doctors.

It was in September 2020 that the worst peak of the first wave began just days after Ganpati Bappa bid adieu to the city in the last week of August.

The fortnight before the Ganpati festival, in the third week of August in 2020, the state had registered 1.7 lakh Covid cases, while the fortnight after the festival added 2.5 lakh cases - a jump of nearly 50%.

A year later, the decline in the Covid second wave has led to easing of most Covid-19-related norms, which has led to a slight rise in daily cases in the city for the last four consecutive days: after almost two weeks of registering less than 300 cases daily, the BMC registered 391 cases on Saturday, and 362, 398 and 342 cases on the previous days.

However, the total cases added in the Maharashtra state and the city since the opening up has not been significant.