Covid-19: Maharashtra reports 3,583 casualties in 10 days

Maharashtra on Saturday recorded 8,296 fresh Covid-19 infections, pushing the count to 6,149,264. The tally of active cases increased to 114,000 after 6,026 recoveries were reported in the past 24 hours.

The state saw 494 casualties, which also includes 315 fatalities owing to the reconciliation process of Covid-19 deaths. Kolhapur reported the highest toll with 26 deaths. It was followed by Aurangabad with 23 fatalities.

The state has reported 3,583 casualties in the past 10 days. Of them, 2,030 fatalities were added as part of the reconciliation process of Covid-19 deaths. This has lifted the number of deaths in the state to 125,528. The case fatality rate of the state is also rising gradually and has reached 2.04%.

Last month, it had reported 26,269 casualties, including 18,727 deaths as part of the reconciliation process.

Dr Subhash Salunkhe, former director general of health services (Maharashtra) and advisor to the state government on Covid-19, said deaths are more in younger generation compared to the first wave. “Casualty figures have increased for two reasons. One, the number of cases is much higher than the first wave and going by the trend, at least one percent of the total cases lose their lives. Second, deaths are more in younger generation this time, apart from senior citizens. This is because of late detection and hospitalisation and hence casualties are higher in the state,” Dr Salunkhe said.

He said that they want to bring CFR down to 1.5% or even less and attempts are being made for the same.

After cases of Delta-plus variants were found, the state government has imposed stricter norms by reducing the five-level relaxation plan to three. The first two levels having maximum relaxations were removed till further order, according to a notification issued by chief secretary Sitaram Kunte on June 25. But daily cases are not reducing in the state. On Friday, Mumbai clocked 503 cases and reported 727,136 cases till date. It also recorded 13 fatalities, taking the toll to 15,612. In the last 24 hours, the state tested 235,020 samples and had a positivity rate of 3.52%. However, the overall positivity rate of the state stood at 14.04%, according to the data issuedon Saturday. A day after vaccinating only 195,396 doses, the state improved its daily tally by administering 362,062 doses on Saturday, according to the data available on Co-Win portal. Till date, 36,341,644 doses have been vaccinated.