Maharashtra Covid surge continues as Mumbai cases drop

Maharashtra reported 40,000-plus cases for the fourth consecutive day on Saturday clocking 46,393 fresh infections taking the state’s count to 7,466,420

MUMBAI: Maharashtra reported 40,000-plus cases for the fourth consecutive day on Saturday clocking 46,393 fresh infections taking the state’s count to 7,466,420. Mumbai, on the other hand, recorded a drop in cases for the fourth consecutive day, with 3568 infections over the weekend, the first sub-5000 day since December 31 (5428 cases). The city’s overall case tally stood at 1,031,365 with 16522 deaths, giving a case fatality rate of 1.6.

Maharashtra Covid surge continues as Mumbai cases drop (Bhushan Koyande/ HT Photo)

The city’s test positivity rate (TPR) on Saturday was 7.15%, with 49,895 tests conducted in the past 24 hours.

On Friday, Maharashtra had recorded 48,270 cases, the highest single-day spike in the ongoing third wave, fuelled by the highly-transmissible Omicron variant. The highest one-day tally in the second wave was 68,631 cases on April 18. It also saw 48 casualties and the total number of fatalities stood at 142,071.

With only 30,795 recoveries on Saturday, active cases in the state rose to 279,930, from Friday’s active cases tally of 264,388 cases. On Thursday, active cases in the state stood 258,569. In the last 48 hours, active cases in the state have risen 8.26%. In the same time, active cases in Mumbai have fallen almost 20% from 21,838 to 17,497.

State health officials said the state’s surge is likely to continue and will reach a peak by the first week of February. The daily spikes from January 19 – 43,697, 46,197, 48,270 and 46,393 – bear this out. While Mumbai cases are dropping, other major districts have been reporting high surges. On Saturday, Pune recorded 11,471 cases, the highest in the state, while Pimpri-Chinchwad recorded 4,825 cases. Nagpur reported 3,960 cases, Nashik 2,371 cases, Satara 1,466 cases, Aurangabad 1,334 cases, Ahmednagar 1,287 cases and Navi Mumbai 1,047 cases.

“The Omicron wave continues in other districts, but this was expected,” said Dr Shashank Joshi, a member of the state’s Covid-19 task force. “Our approach is to focus on four parameters — deaths, hospitalisation, oxygen and ventilators. We have to focus on symptomatic management of patients and identify people at risk, who are vulnerable to get severe disease and death. According to our projection, the peak is likely to hit the state by February first week. However, overall hospitalisation is significantly low.”

In the last 24 hours, the state tested 223,370 samples with a positivity rate of 20.76%. However, the overall positivity rate of the state stood at 10.2%, the health department statement said.

The state also vaccinated 358,618 doses on Saturday and has administered a total 146,036,688 doses till date, according to the data available on CoWin portal.

(With inputs from Pratip Acharya)