Maharashtra records 54,022 cases, 898 deaths

Maharashtra on Friday recorded 54,022 new Covid-19 cases pushing the count to 4,996,758

Maharashtra on Friday recorded 54,022 new Covid-19 cases pushing the count to 4,996,758. The tally of active cases has now slightly increased to 654,788 as 37,386 recoveries were reported in a day.

HT Image

The toll is now 74,413, with 898 deaths recorded on Friday. Nashik reported the highest toll with 133 deaths. Nashik district recorded 102 deaths while Nashik city reported 31 fatalities. It was followed by Mumbai with 71 deaths.

Surge in Covid-19 cases is yet to come down in Maharashtra, despite a lockdown imposed across the state since April 22. However, there is a slight improvement in average daily cases. While 59,647 cases were reported last month, it has reduced to 56,326 in the first week of May. In this month, maximum cases were reported on May 1 — 63,282.

Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray in a recent address said that the state would have crossed one million active cases if lockdown wasn’t imposed. “Going by the predictions made by the experts, the tally of active cases would have crossed one million mark, but we have been able to contain the spread and we have restrained them under 700,000. It is because of the lockdown and the restraint shown by the people,” he said last Friday.

Dr Rahul Pandit, member of the state task force said, “The daily cases in the state are not increasing. Some of the districts that didn’t have a surge in cases until now are not recording more cases. The districts that had witnessed a surge in cases, for example, Mumbai, have started experiencing a decline. That’s the reason our average daily cases of the state are still plateauing and not falling as expected.”

By the end of May, the situation of the state would be better than what it is today, he added.

Maharashtra’s effective reproduction number (R) for Covid-19, which indicates how fast the infection is spreading, has also declined to 1.29 from 1.45 from last week, according to an analysis prepared by the state health department.

For a pandemic to come to an end, the R-value has to be sustained under 1. This infection rate was recorded 0.36 in February when the second wave hit the state. By March, it rose to 1.33.

“Our situation would have gone out of hand if lockdown was not imposed. As we all can see the daily cases have hit stability and by the end of this month or from the first week of June we are expecting a gradual decline,” said a senior official from the state health department.

Officials also said that there are many districts where the rise in daily cases is yet to stabilise. In addition, some districts are currently experiencing a surge in cases, as a result of which, the average daily cases of the state is not showing an expected decline. This is despite the daily average cases of Mumbai coming less than 5,000.

These districts are Ratnagiri, Buldhana, Parbhani, Beed and Sindhudurg and their average weekly positivity rate (till May 4) recorded were 3.18%, 2.83%, 2.67%, 2.64% and 2.60% respectively.

On Friday, Mumbai clocked 3,040 cases and took the total cases to 671,125.

In the last 24 hours, the state tested 268,912 samples and had a positivity rate of 20.08%. The overall positivity rate of the state stood at 17.27%.