The city reported 279 new infections and seven deaths in the last 24 hours. With this, the total count stands at 7,38,522, with 15,975 fatalities. Moreover, the doubling rate has increased to 1,891 days, while the weekly growth rate has dropped to 0.04 per cent.

The state has also witnessed a slight rise in daily cases on Thursday, with 6,388 new infections and 208 fatalities being reported.

The total count is 63,75,390, with 1,34,572 deaths so far. Meanwhile, the fatality rate across the state has been at 2.1 per cent for quite some time.

The state has seen a dip in the emergence cases on a weekly basis between May and August. As per the BMC data, the dip in cases between May and June was 75.88%, while it was 35.35% between June and July and in July and August, it decrease to 28.32%.

Advisor to the state on Covid-19 management, Dr. Subhash Salunkhe, said the decline was due to the proactive steps taken by the government. “We ramped up the number of tests and isolated patients, thus limiting the spread. Lockdown played an important role in cutting down transmission rates and consequently interrupting the surge of the virus,” said Salunkhe.

Additional municipal commissioner, Suresh Kakani, said the current positivity rate is one per cent which means the situation is still under control.

“The marginal increase in cases only suggests that our strategy of targeted and focused testing is working. We are also gradually opening the city and there is plenty of movement of people, which could also be contributing to positive cases,” he said.