PANJIM: Goa’s COVID-19 trajectory has taken an enormous leap in the past week. It took 405 days for Goa’s caseload to touch the 1 lakh mark when on May 4 the confirmed cases stood at 1,00,009, which works to an average of 249 cases a day, but one just has to look at how the State’s COVID numbers rose to grasp the enormity of the current situation.
From 58,039 confirmed coronavirus cases on March 31 to 1,00,009 cases on May 4, the figure came close to doubling in a span of five weeks. With active cases on May 4 at 26,731, the percentage to confirmed cases was 26.49.
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Goa’s first case was reported on March 25, 2020. From there it took 25 weeks to get to 25,000 which was reached on September 15, 2020, when the count was 25,511. For the next 25,000 the time frame was much less at 13 weeks and 5 days and on December 20, 2020 the caseload stood at 50,064. As cases then dropped it took 18 weeks before the 75,000 figure was breached on April 24, 2021, with confirmed cases at 75,184. Unbelievably, it was just ten days later on May 4, 2021 that Goa crossed the 1 lakh mark with 1,00,902 COVID-19 cases.
Details from the Directorate of Health Services indicate that on April 30, 2021 the cumulative count of COVID-19 cases was 88,028, which rose to 91,052 on May 1 and to 1,00,902 on May 4.
What’s also alarming is that while in the first wave of the pandemic the single-day spike never crossed 800 cases, but Goa has reported over 3,000 new cases a day in the second wave. The death count has also led to panic among the people with the highest 71 deaths reported in one day, so far.
A further comparison can be made with the single-day COVID-19 spike in Goa on May 4 that was higher than the new cases reported in Mumbai, the metropolitan city whose population is multiple times higher than that of the State. Details show that Mumbai recorded 2,554 cases on this particular day, whereas Goa, with a population of just over 15 lakh, reported 2,814 new cases from 6,552 tests.
Similarly, on May 3 when Goa’s new cases were 2,703 (pushing the active tally above 25,000), Mumbai had 2,624 new cases.
