Maharashtra on brink of another grim Covid-milestone with highest single day spike

Maharashtra is approaching one lakh coroanvirus positive cases

Maharashtra on Thursday recorded another instance of highest-single-day jump in Covid-19 cases with 3,607 new infections that took the state’s coronavirus tally to 97, 648--within touching distance of the one lakh infections mark. The state also reported 152 deaths taking the death toll to 3,590. Mumbai alone reported 1,418 of all new infections registered in the state in the last 24 hours.

Maharashtra has recorded more than 3,000 Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours in a grim reminder of the rapid spread of the disease. (ANI Photo)

Mumbai also registered 97 new deaths that have taken the death toll to 1,954 from amongst the maximum city’s total Covid cases of 54,085 registered till date. Of the 152 deaths reported by Maharashtra health department today, 35 had taken place in the last two days while the remaining are pending cases from the period between April 1 and June 8.

Maharashtra approaches the grim landmark of 1 lakh cases in the backdrop of chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s statement a day ago warning of imposing a hard lockdown if the situation worsened and if the people in the state didn’t respect the restrictions put in place to contain the spread of the disease.

For Coronavirus Live Updates

However on Thursday, the chief minister was reported to have expressed confidence that the scaled-up health infrastructure in the state was adequate to meet with the demands of the current crisis.

While speaking at the inauguration of a Covid care centre developed by Wipro at the Hinjawadi IT Park in Pune, Uddhav credited his government for “succeeding” in setting up adequate number of health care facilities for treatment of Covid-19 patients in a short span.

“During the initial stage of the Covid-19 outbreak, the health care infrastructure in the state was not adequate. But we have now succeeded in developing enough facilities,” the chief minister was quoted as saying by PTI.

The agency also quoted state health minister Rajesh Tope said the government was committed to invest money for raising similar facilities in rural areas of the state.

The state government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Wipro to provide treatment to coronavirus patients for a year.

Maharashtra is India’s worst-affected state from the coronavirus infection.