Maharashtra facing surge in cases even outside red zones

Maharashtra is facing a surge in Covid-19 cases in all its areas, irrespective of zones created to differentiate between areas with large numbers of infections and those with fewer cases.

Statistics show that 19 cities declared as red zones, with large numbers of Covid-19 cases, has 250,075 cases on July 20, as against 67,885 cases on June 3, when the state started relaxing lockdown restrictions in red zones comprising the nine cities of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Pune, Solapur, Aurangabad, Malegaon, Nashik, Dhule, Jalgaon, Akola, Amravati and Nagpur.

But a comparative analysis indicated their contribution to the total cases was reducing. It has come down to 78.46% from 90.68% on June 3, which indicated a surge in cases in areas other than red zones, especially in rural areas.

Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, during a meeting held on Monday, said the Covid-19 cases have started spreading in rural areas from urban areas, and instructions had been issued to local authorities to augment health infrastructure in all districts.

The review meeting was called to take stock of the Covid-19 situation in Mumbai, and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s preparations for monsoon-related ailments.

Maharashtra has recorded 143,936 Covid-19 cases in the first 20 days of this month, as against 302 cases in March, 10,196 in April, 57,157 in May and 102,172 cases in June. That comes to 7,196 cases a day on an average.

On Monday, the state’s case count reached 318,695, after 8,240 cases were recorded. This has pushed the tally of active cases to 131,334 ,according to the state health department.

It was the fifth day when the state recorded more than 8,000 cases in a day. The state recorded the highest single day spike on July 19, with 9,518 cases.

State health minister Rajesh Tope said more than 84,000 patients have recovered in the past 20 days. “As many as 84,118 infected patients have recovered and been discharged from hospitals across the state. It comes to around 4,200 patients a day on an average,” Tope said.

On Monday alone, 5,460 people recovered, taking the recovery rate of the state to 54.92%, he added.

Along with the spike in cases, the state is facing a large number of deaths on a daily basis. In the 20 days since July 1, it has recorded 4,024 Covid-19 casualties.

With 12,030 deaths, the case fatality rate (CFR) of the state was recorded at 3.77% on Monday. It continues to be second highest in the country after Gujarat, where CFR is 4.43% with 2,142 deaths (48,355 cases) till Sunday, according to statistics shared by the state medical education department.

Maharashtra still has the highest number of deaths across states in the country.

The state’s positivity rate against the total number of tests is increasing. On Monday, it was recorded at 19.91%, against 15.05% on June 3. So far, the state has tested more than 1.6 million people (1,600,667 tests), and of them, 1,281,972 tested negative.