Maharashtra reports 58,924 Covid-19 infections

Maharashtra on Monday recorded 58,924 Covid-19 infections, pushing the count to 3,898,262, even as deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar decided to restrict timings of grocery shops for four hours between 7am and 11am every day

Maharashtra on Monday recorded 58,924 Covid-19 infections, pushing the count to 3,898,262, even as deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar decided to restrict timings of grocery shops for four hours between 7am and 11am every day. The state saw 351 deaths, taking the toll to 60,824. The surge has led to a sharp rise in active cases as its tally stood at 676,520. It comes to 17.35% of the total cases reported till date.

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The surge in Covid-19 cases has been on in Maharashtra for more than two months. For the past three days, it has been reporting its highest single-day spikes, including Sunday’s 68,631 infections. It has also recorded over a million cases (1,085,196) in the last 19 days and is likely to cross 1.5 million cases within a month, the officials said. Health experts, however, said the state is likely to hit a plateau in the next 10 days and a drop may start from the middle of next month.

The stricter curbs imposed from April 14 have yet to show results, to which state health minister Rajesh Tope said they expect people to cooperate and strictly follow all restrictions. He also said that chief minister Uddhav Thackeray may take a decision on a complete lockdown if required.

The decision was taken in a review meeting called to take stock of the situation. It was found people roam around unnecessarily the whole day in the name of buying groceries and the restriction in timings will prevent them from doing so, the officials said.

An official order to this effect is yet to be issued.

“The objective behind imposing stricter curbs is to break the chain of transmission, but for this, people’s cooperation is also needed. Now, directives have been issued to the police force for strict implementation of all restrictions. Today, in a meeting chaired by the deputy chief minister it was also decided to restrict timings of grocery stores,” the health minister said.

“The state government will take a decision if it is found absolutely necessary,” Tope said, in response to a question over complete lockdown will be imposed.

“Though there is no impact of the restrictions at present, in the next 10 days, the daily cases are likely to hit a plateau and by May 15 a decline in daily cases is expected. By June-end, daily cases are likely to come down reasonably. But to get the expected results, the state has to continue the stricter restrictions,” said Dr Subhash Salunkhe, state advisor on the Covid-19 and former director general of health services.

In the last 24 hours, the state tested 221,626 samples and had a positivity rate of 26.58%. The overall positivity rate of the state stood at 16.19%. It has also reported recoveries of 52,412 patients on Monday, taking the tally of recovered patients to 3,159,240.

Mumbai recorded 7,381 fresh cases in a day and its tally increased to 586,867. City’s active case count was 85,321. With 7,307 cases, Pune recorded the second highest cases across the state. Of them, Pune city and district recorded 4,616 and 2,691 respectively in a day.

Meanwhile, the state inoculated 127,079 beneficiaries on Monday, taking the total of beneficiaries of the vaccination drive to 12,283,050 till date. The drive was conducted at 1,515 centres.

“We are still receiving much fewer doses than what has been demanded from the Centre. The supply is not constant in numbers and also not as per our demand. We require 4 million doses a week to inoculate 500,000 beneficiaries a day, which is not possible to achieve if vaccine doses are not provided in adequate numbers,” said an official, wishing not to be named.

Salunkhe said that the state needs to immunise at least 25 to 30% of its total population by June-end only by then it can avoid future troubles that are going to come because of this pandemic.