FPJ Explains: Why did Mumbai's active COVID-19 cases plummet by 5,662 in just two days?

After reconciliation, the active cases across the city dropped below 10,000 after four months. According to the data, active cases in Mumbai dropped to 9,148 which is the lowest since February 26 when 9,315 active cases were reported. Civic officials attributed this drop to the large-scale data reconciliation exercise to remove glitches in Mumbai’s COVID-19 figures.

Suresh Kakani, the additional municipal commissioner said reconciliation of covid cases and fatalities is the ongoing process. As most of the time, there is a duplication of cases which need to be scrutinised by collating data from each hospital and data updated on the ICMR portal. “For the last two days, reconciliation is being done, resulting in the numbers of progressive cases and active cases both dropping. However the reconciliation will be continued until duplicate cases have not been removed,” he said.

However, the civic body has reconciled and scrutinised 5,844 cases from the progressive count, recovered and active cases which have been removed. The city's active cases went down by 5,662. On June 24, the city had 14,810 active cases. On June 25, the active cases went down by 4,373 (10,437 active cases). On June 26, the active cases went down by 1,289 (9,148 active cases).

Senior health officials from the state health department said in the reconciliation process, each district and municipal corporation should inform the number of cases discharged, number of COVID-19 deaths and active cases.

“The exercise is also necessary to know the exact load of active cases and for better planning to utilise the health infrastructure. Government offices have also been asked to carry out data cleaning of all records directly sent to district collectors and municipal commissioners,” he said.