Iqbal Singh Chahal, the BMC Commissioner, has ordered nine of the twenty-four wards to conduct a thousand tests for the coronavirus daily, while the rest of the wards have been given a target of four hundred tests daily.
These targets are to be equally divided between antigen and RT-PCR tests. The order was given during a recent meeting with ward officials over video conferencing.
Meanwhile, the BMC had earlier initiated the second phase of the sero-surveillance study in the city to assess the spread of the coronavirus and how many people have developed antibodies against the disease.
The survey has covered areas such as F-North (Dadar, Matunga and Dharavi), M-West (Deonar and Govandi) and R-North (Dahisar) wards, where a similar study was conducted last month.
The serosurvey conducted in the first half of July revealed that 57 per cent of the slum population and 16 per cent of the non-slum residents in the three civic wards had developed antibodies. It showed a high proportion of asymptomatic cases of the coronavirus infection in the city.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra reported 11,119 fresh cases of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, propelling the state's COVID-19 tally to 6,15,477.
The number of recovered patients rose by 9,356 in the same period, taking the aggregate of recovered cases to 4,37,870. The recovery rate in the state now stands at 71.14 per cent, closing in on the national average of 73.18 per cent.
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