Mumbai: ‘If schools reopen at once, 700 Covid cases likely daily’

MUMBAI: If schools reopen all at once, the city could witness a rise in Covid cases around 500 to 700 cases a day in few months, according to an analysis by a team from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR).
Prof Sandeep Juneja, TIFR’s School of Technology and Computer Science, said the mathematical model developed by his team showed a “gradual’’ reopening would be better for checking the spread of Covid.
“Our graph makes a somewhat obvious case. If you open schools now all at once in Mumbai in January-February, you may see a significant increase in fatalities. This will correspond to 500 to 700 cases a day by mid-December,’’ said Juneja.
Over the last two years of Covid, it has become clear that though children get infected by SARS-COV-2, they are more likely than adults to remain asymptomatic. But they can spread the disease, forcing many countries, including India, to shut schools.
With the decline of second wave, reopened for older children a month back, in Mumbai, students from Classes VIII to XII started attending offline classes. BMC additional commissioner Suresh Kakani told TOI schools would reopen in a “staggered manner’’ to avoid crowding.
The TIFR team found a “gradual strategy with associated protection measures’’ such as use of masks and maintaining social distancing would be best. “Cases would continue to stay low,’’ said Juneja. But the projections have not taken into account the possibility of a new variant stronger than Delta coming up. tnn