In view of the rising infection of coronavirus in Mumbai, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had inducted about 244 free disease testing facilities in the first week of November. Launched in all 24 wards of the financial capital, these zero-cost COVID testing centres witnessed a surged footfall of 1 lakh volunteers, out of which about 3% tested positive for the infection. With the identification of about 26, 929 confirmed cases in Mumbai, the civc body centres have helped discover 11% of the state's confirmed cases in the last month.
Mumbai's boosted testing helps to arrest the rise in positivity ratio
In a bid to ramp up testing potential of the state, the BMC brought COVID sampling practically at the doorstep of each Mumbaikar, with testing centres across all wards of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Conducting both, RT-PCR and rapid antigen tests free of cost, these facilities were dedicated to sample through the population, who voluntarily wanted to get the coronavirus test done.
Citizens can access the addresses of these centres by calling at the BMC's main control room via the toll free number 1916. The locations are also listed on the dedicated COVID-19 websites of the state. Earlier, The BMC had clarified that any individuals who develops symptoms of Sars-CoV-2, which causes the coronavirus infection, or has come in direct contact with a positive patient can get themselves tested at these facilities for zero-cost. Classic Covid-19 symptoms include fever, cough, cold, difficulty in breathing and pneumonia.
The Additional Commissioner of BMC has stated that individuals have been encouraged to get sampled at these centres by providing them with walk-in, zero-cost services. Though, he also added that these BMC run facilities have identified only a nominal 3% positivity rate, which is much lesser in comparison to the city's exponentially rising ones.
The civic body has also scaled-up the testing capacity of Mumbai over the count of 17,000 samples a day, which has effectively reduced the positivity ratio of fresh cases to 15% from 16%. Besides this, the state government has already reduced the cost of COVID-19 tests at private laboratories in the city. Mumbaikars can now get themselves tested at ₹14,000 at private labs, while home-sampling has been capped at ₹1,800.
In the last 24 hours, Mumbai recorded a growth of 646 new cases, pushing the total caseload over the tally of 2,83,467 infection. The active patientload stands at 15,473, with 763 recoveries and 19 deaths on Monday. So far, 2,56,303 people in Mumbai have successfully recovered from the virus, while 10,884 have succumbed to the fatal virus.
