Uddhav Thackeray asks for blood and plasma donations, won’t celebrate birthday this year

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has been holding consultations to curb the spread of the disease in state.

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has announced that he won’t celebrate his birthday this year due to the coronavirus crisis that has impacted the western state the most. Thackeray has appealed to his supporters and party workers to not put up flexes and hoardings wishing him on the occasion. He has asked them to instead make donations to the chief minister’s relief fund and organise blood donation and plasma donation camps, said an official communication from his office. Uddhav’s birthday falls on July 27.

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s office has announced that he won’t be celebrating his birthday this year .(PTI Photo/File/representative)

Thackeray’s announcement comes a day after the state government stepped up its efforts to contain the spread of the disease by holding consultations with medical experts from various streams even as a record surge of 10,576 cases took the total number of infections in the state to 3,37,607.

Maharashtra has 1,36,980 active cases while the number of discharged patients is at 1,87,769. The number of fatalities due to Covid-19 has reached 12,556 after 280 deaths were reported on Wednesday.

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Mumbai is the worst hit city in the state with 1,04,678 cases and 5,875 deaths followed by Pune, which has recorded 63,351 cases and 1,514 fatalities.

However, there is some positive news coming from Mumbai, where Covid-19 patient increase rate has marginally reduced to 1.17 per cent from 1.18 per cent recorded on Tuesday.

With 37,724 cases and 648 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, the total number of Covid-19 cases in India stands at 11,92,915.

On Wednesday, Thackeray requested experts from Indian Medical Association and also from Ayurveda, Unani medicine and Homeopathy branch of alternative medicines to come together and suggest preventive measures and treatment protocol for Coved 19 patients.

Covid-19 update: Mumbai’s first phase of sero survey gets over, results to be out soon

In another move to coordinate its response to the disease, state health minister Rajesh Tope said the government was planning to set up a single command centre to oversee coronavirus bed management in hospitals in the Mumbai metropolitan region (MMR) to address the issue of bed availability in the MMR since people from satellite towns were coming to Mumbai for treatment.

The MMR includes Mumbai as well as surrounding satellite cities in Thane, Palghar and Navi Mumbai.

In another related announcement, Serum Institute of India has said that the high prevalence of Covid-19 infections in Mumbai and Pune will give the company an opportunity to test the efficacy of the vaccine developed jointly by Oxford University and AstraZeneca.

The institute said that between 4,000 to 5,000 people in Pune and Mumbai will be injected with the vaccine as part of the clinical trials by the end of August.