Mumbai, May 27 (IANS): In a bid to check the growing number of Covid-19 deaths and cases in the country's commercial capital, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has launched a 'Chase the Virus' initiative, a top official said on Wednesday.

Under this ambitious mission, BMC Commissioner I. S. Chahal said that for every Covid-19 positive case, 15 persons would be quarantined.

"When the Central team visited Mumbai, the ratio was 1:3, and presently it is around 1:6, but now we will compulsorily send to institutional quarantine 15 close contacts of the Covid-19 patient, or 1:15," Chahal said.

In this manner, the health authorities seek to not only break the chain, but go on top of the virus and contain its spread.

The mission was launched after a series of meetings between the BMC and the state government with the final green signal from Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.

Chahal has already conducted detailed meetings with all the BMC 24 Ward Officers, war rooms are coming up in each ward, police are being deployed and buses are being readied to implement the initiative.

The BMC has also tied up with a cab aggregator and kept around 450 ambulances ready for patients, up from 100, to transport Covid-19 patients, and is augmenting bed capacities in a big way to cater to the anticipated spike in cases in the coming weeks.

Mumbai has presently notched 1,065 fatalities and 32,974 patients so far, with the highest being in the congested Dharavi in central Mumbai, with 1,621 cases and 59 deaths.

The state has been recording 50-plus fatalities and over 2,000 new patients for the past 10 consecutive days now, with the toll at 1,792 and the total number of coronavirus patients touching 54,758 as on Wednesday.