87.92% Covid cases in Maha are from 19 cities

Maharashtra’s Covid-19 case tally on Monday jumped to 135,796 after 3,721 more infections were reported. The state currently has 61,793 active cases, the health

Maharashtra’s Covid-19 case tally on Monday jumped to 135,796 after 3,721 more infections were reported. The state currently has 61,793 active cases, the health department said, as officials expect cases to peak in July with the number of fresh infections likely to rise in the coming days.

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Monday was the 13th day the state reported over 3,000 cases.

Maharashtra on Monday recorded 113 deaths, taking the toll to 6,283. Sixty-two deaths were from the past 48 hours, while 51 were over the past few days, health officials said.

Mumbai, the worst-hit city across the country, recorded 1,098 cases as its count reached 67,586. Of them, 29,720 are active cases. The city toll stands at 3,737 after 66 deaths were reported.

Most of the fresh Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra are coming from 19 cities — the nine municipal corporations of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Pune, Solapur, Aurangabad, Malegaon, Nashik, Dhule, Jalgaon, Akola, Amravati and Nagpur.

They constitute 87.92% of the total cases in the state.

These cities have also reported a surge of over 50,000 cases in the past 19 days, since lockdown restrictions were eased.

On June 3, the cities that were earmarked as red zones had 67,885 cases and on June 22, they had 1,19,402.

As part of its ‘Mission Begin Again’ to ease the lockdown, the state government from June 3 had allowed outdoor activities such as jogging, running, cycling in open grounds and stadium.

From June 5, it allowed shops and marketplaces to be opened and from June 8, it also allowed private offices to open with a strength of maximum 10 people.

It further allowed inter-district movement in MMR and allowed BEST buses to ply in the region from June 5.

“Going by the fresh projections, the peak is likely to come in July. If that happens, it will take another month for the cases to decline and by September, the situation may come under complete control. It also means that cases will rise further for the time being,” said a senior official, requesting anonymity.

“You know lockdown cannot be imposed forever and unlocking was the need of the hour. The state government was under tremendous pressure from all sides for relaxing restrictions. So, we augmented the health infrastructure and also allowed graded relaxations to ensure situation will remain under control,” said a senior official who was a member of the task force formed by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray to tackle the pandemic.

Chief secretary Ajoy Mehta said that the situation is in under control and the rise in number is also static. “I can say that the situation of Maharashtra is in control. After relaxations were allowed, fresh cases did rise, but by and large they are static in nature. I don’t think they will increase until more relaxations will be allowed,” Mehta told Marathi news channel ABPMajha on Monday.

Another concerning issue is the rising case fatality rate (CFR) that reached 4.67% on Sunday. 45.59% of the total deaths in the country are registered in Maharashtra alone.

By the end of May, the state had successfully brought down the CFR to 3.26% from 7.41% (with 148 deaths) on April 13. But it has started rising again.

“Our CFR is increasing, but a lot of work is silently going on to control it. Clear instructions have been issued to admit patients immediately if found any symptoms. If patients are admitted early then the treatment can be started in the golden hour and he or she can be saved from slipping into a serious condition. Our taskforce of expert doctors is updating the line of treatment on a regular basis and very soon CFR will come down,” the chief secretary said.

Last week, Thackeray, in a review meeting, directed the constitution of a taskforce comprising experts and senior doctors at district or division level to bring down CFR “

The highest single-day toll of 186 deaths was recorded on June 21. According to the state, barring Mumbai, reconciliation of deaths in all districts and municipal corporations has been completed.

The recovery rate reached 49.86% after 1,962 patients recovered in the past 24 hours. The total number of recovered patients is 67,706 On June 16, the state’s recovery rate was 50.99%

The health department declared it has conducted 7,87,419 tests at various public and private facilities across Maharashtra. Of them, 651,623 people tested negative. It means 17.2% of the total samples tested positive, said an official.