Mumbai’s civic chief Praveen Pardeshi told Vijay V Singh and Sumitra DebRoy on Friday that the city is reporting more cases because of large-scale testing and strategies like large-scale containment will break the chain of transmission. Excerpts from an interview:

Mumbai now accounts for a majority of cases in Maharashtra. What is the situation on the ground and how are you dealing with it?

For a city of 12 million, we have 278 cases. The reason we have maximum cases is we are testing a lot. Till date, we have tested over 10,000 samples, including people from MMR. Compared to that, only 1,200 tests were carried out in the rest of Maharashtra. Mumbai’s figures are comparable with an entire state like Kerala that has tested around 8,000 samples. Testing is the only way to win this battle. We also had many enter the city between March 10-16 sans screening.

How has aggressive testing helped?

Through more testing, we are able to detect a person much before he becomes a full-blown case and starts spreading the infection. We are able to put him in isolation. Otherwise he would have affected many more.

What is the BMC’s strategy now that Covid-19 has reached slums?

Our biggest challenge indeed is congestion and density of population. We have, therefore, decided to move around 5,000 high-risk contacts of positive patients to civic facilities, unlike our previous strategy of homequarantining them. Almost 1,000 have already been moved from home to institutional quarantine. BMC has readied 10,000 rooms to accommodate families. The areas will be spacious and have access to clean bathrooms.

Is this the strategy around Worli-Koliwada that has emerged as a hotbed of cases?

We have moved around 273 high-risk contacts from G South ward to BMC premises. If any of them show symptoms, they will be admitted to hospitals. Also, we are no longer convincing people. Now we are using force.

Questions have been raised about BMC’s contact tracing. Has it been efficient?

We have dedicated teams working aggressively to reach every possible contact. So far we have reached out to almost 4 lakh people. For instance, of the 28 suspects on Thursday, we contacted 475, of which 22 came positive.

Are there enough ventilators?

We have enough ventilators and have ordered 50 more, which we will get soon. The CM spoke to industrialists and they are going to increase production of PPEs and ventilators for us. The Reliance group has assured is it will ramp up production.

We have also had the highest deaths in the state. What does it tell us?

Deaths have mostly been in the age-group of 60 and above. Out fatality rate is around 4%.