Maharashtra sees 48,401 cases, tally crosses 5.1 million

Maharashtra on Sunday recorded 48,401 daily infections pushing the count to 5,101,737

Maharashtra on Sunday recorded 48,401 daily infections pushing the count to 5,101,737. The tally of active cases reduced to 615,783 as 60,226 recoveries were reported in the last 24 hours.

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The state saw 572 casualties that took the toll figures up to 75,849. Mumbai reported the highest toll with 68 fatalities. It was followed by Kalyan-Dombivli city with 50 deaths.

It has been three months since the state is facing a surge in cases and 17 days since the state is under complete lockdown. The lockdown restrictions have helped in stabilizing the rise in daily cases but they are yet to start declining.

An analysis of statistics also shows that the daily testing of the state is also not going up. In the last three weeks since April 19, the daily tests conducted remained between 210,000 and 290,000 per day. Maximum tests were conducted on April 30 — 290,207.

Officials said that there is a limit on stretching the testing apparatus. Maharashtra is among the states having conducted maximum tests and the positivity rate has also started coming down.

“We have increased daily testing from a maximum 96,000 per day in the first wave to 290,000 per day in the second wave, which is many times more than what we were doing last year. We have maintained tracing over ten contacts against one positive patient,” said Dr Archana Patil director, directorate of health services.

The positivity rate of the state has also started declining from 25% a day to around 21% a day which indicates that our situation is improving,” she pointed out. Dr Patil further said that the state is providing mobile laboratories to eight districts where the pendency rate of daily tests was higher. “We have provided mobile laboratories in Pune, Nagpur, Nashik, Jalna, Aurangabad and Bhandara, while the process to provide mobile laboratories in Raigad and Jalgaon is going on,” she said.

Dr Subhash Salunkhe, state advisor on the Covid-19 and former director-general of health services said, “There is no doubt that testing is very important, but testing apparatus also has its limitations. There are operational difficulties as we cannot stretch them beyond a limit. We are also facing challenges in contact tracing as the entire machinery is overburdened with multiple responsibilities such as vaccination. We are trying to find out alternatives to deal with the situation.”

On Sunday, Ahmednagar clocked maximum cases — 2,779. Of them, the district reported 2,618 cases and the city recorded 379 cases.

Mumbai clocked 2,395 cases that took the tally of total cases to 675,630. In the last 24 hours, the state tested 247,466 samples and had a positivity rate of 19.55%. The overall positivity rate of the state stood at 17.33%.