Five districts of Maharashtra have 75% active Covid-19 cases

The latest report from the public health department shows that no sudden spike in the Covid pandemic curve has been witnessed in any of the districts of Maharashtra. The seven-day cases positivity rate of the state stands at 2.1%

Five districts of Maharashtra — Pune, Mumbai, Ahmednagar, Thane, and Satara account for almost 74% of the cumulative active Covid-19 patients who are currently on treatment. The latest report from the public health department shows that no sudden spike in the pandemic curve has been witnessed in any districts of Maharashtra. The seven-day positivity rate of the state stands at 2.1%.

Five districts of Maharashtra — Pune, Mumbai, Ahmednagar, Thane, and Satara account for almost 74% of the cumulative active Covid-19 patients who are currently on treatment. The latest report from the public health department shows that no sudden spike in the pandemic curve has been witnessed in any districts of Maharashtra. The seven-day positivity rate of the state stands at 2.1%.

As per the data, there are a total of 33,006 active Covid-19 patients in the state, of which 24,277 are undergoing treatment at Pune, Mumbai, Ahmednagar, Thane, and Satara. The highest number of active Covid-19 patients are in Pune (8,422), followed by Mumbai (5,949), Thane (4,220), Ahmednagar (3,803) and Satara (1,883).

Other than this, another five districts — Raigad, Solapur, Sangli, Nashik and Sindhudurg collectively have 15% of the state’s active Covid-19 patients.

Dr Pradeep Awate, state surveillance officer said that in the past 20 days, the number of active cases has fallen by 21%. “At present, out of the 36 districts, 10 have 90% of the active Covid-19 cases. Cities like Mumbai, Thane and Pune with higher populations have most of the active cases, which have been the scenario since the start of the pandemic last year,” he said.

Also, the seven-day positivity rate has dropped from 2.5% to 2.1% in the same period in the state. Between September 13 and 20, Ahmednagar had recorded a 5.3% seven-day positivity rate — the highest in the state — has now dropped to 3.1%. However, in the last week, the district has been recording a daily 5% positivity rate. Restrictions have been imposed in 61 villages in Akole, Karjat, Kopargaon, Newasa, Parner, Pathardi, Rahata, Sangamner, Shevgaon, Shrigonda, and Srirampur tehsils, said Bhosale.

District collector of Ahmednagar Rajendra Bhosale said, “The district is witnessing 500-800 cases daily and the positivity rate has climbed to over 5%. We have witnessed that people are not following Covid-appropriate behaviour. Hence, we have been forced to impose restrictions.”

Along with this, Sindhudurg is also becoming a cause of concern as the seven-day positivity rate of the district stands at 4.7%.

Recently, Dr Pradeep Vyas, additional chief secretary, Maharashtra (health) held a meeting with the public health officers from these 10 districts and asked them to pay special attention. He has also been instructed to increase the daily testing in these districts.

“During the Ganesh Chaturthi, almost two lakh people turned up in Konkan Region. So, this is one of the contributing factors for the rise in positivity rate in these districts, including Sindhudurg. If caseload increases further, we may impose local lockdown,” said a senior health officer who was part of the team.

However, the cumulative seven-day positivity rate in the state has dropped from 2.5% to 2.1% between September 20 and October 9. Dr Awate said that from May to the first week of October, over 10,000 samples have been sent for genome sequencing from Maharashtra. But no new variant of Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, has been identified. “Almost 80-90% of the samples had the Delta variant and its sub-lineages variants,” he said.