6,741 fresh cases up state tally to 267,665

Maharashtra’s Covid-19 case count on Tuesday reached 267,665 after 6,741 new infections were recorded on Tuesday —a slight increase after two days of fewer new cases.

Maharashtra’s Covid-19 case count on Tuesday reached 267,665 after 6,741 new infections were recorded on Tuesday —a slight increase after two days of fewer new cases. The state has 107,665 active cases, according to the state health department. The death toll of the state touched 10,695 after 213 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours, health officials said.

HT Image

Health experts said that fluctuation in daily new cases is normal unless the drop stays for over 10 days. “In a pandemic, fluctuation in number of cases keeps happening. It is significant only if cases continue to drop for over 10 days. In that scenario, the change can be interpreted,” said Dr Subhash Salunkhe, public health expert, who is also heading the communicable diseases prevention control and technical committee of the state.

The number of fresh cases in Mumbai dropped below the 1,000 mark on Tuesday — second-lowest in 63 days — at 954. The city’s count now stands at 95,100. Of them, active cases are 22,773. Mumbai’s toll stands at 5,405 after 70 more deaths were reported.

Meanwhile, state health minister Rajesh Tope said they are expecting a flattening of the curve soon. “We are working in mission mode to control the pandemic. Many cities have again imposed lockdown. Going by the pattern in New York and European countries, flattening of the curve in the state should start soon. However, no one can say by when cases will start declining,” Tope said.

The number of recovered patients across the state also increased close to 1.5 lakh after 4,500 recovered and were discharged from various hospitals in the past 24 hours. Their tally is 149,007. The recovery rate of the state has improved to 55.67%, against the national recovery rate of 63.02%.

The spike in the viral outbreak has forced several civic bodies to reimpose lockdown restrictions in a bid to flatten the curve. Thane, Kalyan-Dombivli, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, and Navi Mumbai, which are a part of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), have extended re-imposed lockdown restrictions until July 19, while Ulhasnagar and Panvel have extended the lockdown till July 22 and July 24 respectively.

Nine cities of MMR has got 1,64,320 cases, which contributes to 61.39% in the total cases.

Apart from Mumbai, the other cities in MMR are Thane, Navi Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivli, Mira-Bhayander, Ulhasnagar, Panvel, Vasai-Virar and Bhiwandi-Nizampur. Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur and Aurangabad municipal corporations have also reimposed lockdown restrictions. Latur city, too, has declared to impose 15-day strict lockdown that will come in force from July 15 midnight. In the urban areas of Nashik, night curfew has been imposed from 7 pm to 5am from July 2.

On Tuesday, Pune found 1,139 new cases, more than Mumbai’s. It also has highest number of cases —30,751 — after Mumbai, while Pimpri Chinchwad, Solapur, Aurangabad and Latur city has reported 541, 103, 175 and 21 new cases respectively.

Districts such as Raigad have also announced lockdown restrictions starting from Wednesday (July 15). Besides, Nanded, Osmanabad and Jalna are currently in lockdown. Nanded is in eight-day lockdown, starting from July 12, Osmanabad is in seven-day lockdown starting from July 13 and Jalna is in 10-day lockdown, which started from July 5 midnight. Satara district administration has also decided to impose a six-day lockdown ,starting July 17.

Raigad, Nanded, Osmanabad and Jalna districts have 4,616, 411, 410 and 1,084 Covid-19 cases. Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg and Beed districts had also re-imposed lockdown restrictions for about eight to 10 days in early July. Currently, they have 916, 262 and 241 infections respectively.

Along with spike in cases, the state is also facing a large number of deaths on a daily basis. In the past 14 days (since July 1), it has recorded 2,689 Covid casualties.

With 10,482 deaths, the case fatality rate (CFR) of the state was recorded at 4.02% on Monday. It is second-highest in the country after Gujarat, where CFR is 4.81% with 2,055 deaths (42,722 cases) till Monday, according to the statistics shared by the state medical education department.

Maharashtra still has highest number of deaths across states in the country. “To bring down Covid deaths, we have started conducting antigen tests in containment zones and that too in large numbers. Antigen tests provided reports in just half an hour. If tests come negative and the patients has Covid symptoms, then we also conduct RT-PCR tests to confirm whether the patients is negative or not. This is helping in providing early treatment to the patients,” the health minister said.

He said that they have also increased number of laboratories to 110 and have directed all of them to utilise fullest capacity.

On the shortage of health infrastructure to deal with rise in cases, he said that this needs to be augmented only in cities of MMR. “We have built field hospitals in Mumbai and building more in MMR cities. For rest of the state, we have no shortage of beds. We are concerned only about ICU beds as we may face their shortage in future if cases rise further. We are working to augment them, but as of now there is no such shortage,” the health minister said.