Covid-19 tally up to 318,695: Has community spread begun in Maha?

Maharashtra’s Covid-19 case count on Monday reached 318,695 after 8,240 new cases were reported, even as an official opined that the state could have already entered

Maharashtra’s Covid-19 case count on Monday reached 318,695 after 8,240 new cases were reported, even as an official opined that the state could have already entered the community transmission stage — when the source of infection is not known.

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However, Maharashtra’s health minister Rajesh Tope denied community transmission has started.

“We have been able to trace all contacts so far and also ICMR [Indian Council of Medical Research] has not said anything on that, as of now. Let them say, then we will look into it,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Dr Subhash Salunkhe, public health expert, who is also heading the communicable diseases prevention control and technical committee of the state , felt that community transmission has started in Maharashtra.

“Community transmission has started, especially in cities like Mumbai and Pune. Earlier, we used to trace some connection for a Covid-19 infection, like travel history of a patient or someone who came in contact with those having travel history, but now the situation has changed. The people found infected have no such connections. We will have to admit that it [Covid-19] has spread into to the community,” said Dr Salunkhe.

Later, Salunkhe said he commented about community transmission going by their own definition as all sources of infection are local now.

“There is no outside source left for infections. All the sources of infections are local now,” Salunkhe said.

Monday was the fifth day the state recorded over 8,000 cases in a day, including its highest single-day spike of 9,518 on Sunday. Two days after Mumbai crossed the 1 lakh cases mark, the rest of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) crossed the same to touch 100,847 infections. As of Monday, the state has 131,334 active cases, the health department said.

With over 9,000 cases in a day, questions are being raised if community transmission has started in the state as the Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Saturday said that the exponential growth in cases showed that the country has reached community transmission stage.

Maharashtra crossed the grim milestone of 3 lakh cases in 19 weeks (on July 18) since the first Covid-19 case was reported on March 9.

Meanwhile, the death toll of the state also crossed 12,000 after 176 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours. Death count stands at 12,030, according to state health department data. The highest toll in a day was reported on July 4 with 295 cases. Mumbai has maintained its stability with respect to number of fresh cases with 1,035 new infections reported on Monday. Its case count stands at 102,423. Of them, active cases are 23,728.

On June 27, Mumbai reported its highest single-day spike of 2,077 cases. In July, the highest single- day spike in the city was recorded at 1,552 on July 2.

The city’s toll stands at 5,755 after 41 deaths were reported in a day.

Maharashtra crossed the 3 lakh mark within 14 days after it breached 2 lakh on July 4. It took the state 96 days to cross 1 lakh cases on June 12 and 22 days to cross the 2 lakh mark.

Going by statistics, Maharashtra has recorded 143,936 cases in 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. On an average, it comes to 7,196 cases a day.

With over 318,695 cases, Maharashtra, if it were a country, would have joined a list of 10 countries having over 3 lakh cases. In the index, Maharashtra would have been at 9th position as it has surpassed Spain, which has 307,335 Covid-19 cases, as per data available at worldometers.info.

To deal with surge in cases, the state government has decided to augment health infrastructure in each and every district. It has developed field hospitals in Mumbai and similar field hospitals are now coming up in other eight satellite cities — Thane, Navi Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivli, Mira-Bhayander, Ulhasnagar, Panvel, Vasai-Virar and Bhiwandi-Nizampur — of the MMR.

But a major problem the state is facing is shortage of health staff, which includes doctors, nurses, paramedical staff etc. The issue was discussed in a meeting called by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray to review the Covid situation in the state on Saturday. The officials informed that they are facing a serious problem of health staff, including doctors. “With rising cases in small cities and rural areas, the chief minister was told that the health infrastructure there needed to be augmented, but the actual problem is availability of health staff. The infrastructure can be developed but from where do we get health staff, including doctors, is a major problem,” said a senior official, who had attended the meet.

Dr Salunkhe said availability of health staff is a major issue before the state.

“To deal with this, we will have to rope in private doctors, all doctors other than allopathy and NGOs, as almost 85% Covid-19patients are asymptomatic and don’t need doctors, but need health staff to be taken care of,” he said.

The number of cases in 19 cities that were declared as red zone reached 250,075 on July 20 against 67,885 cases on June 3 when the state decided to relax lockdown restrictions in these red zones, comprising nine cities of MMR, Pune, Solapur, Aurangabad, Malegaon, Nashik, Dhule, Jalgaon, Akola, Amravati and Nagpur.

However, their contribution in total cases has reduced to 78.46% from 90.68% on June 3, which indicates surge in cases in areas other than red zones.

Along with spike in cases, the state is also facing a large number of deaths on a daily basis. In the last 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 as 3.77% on Monday. It continued to be the 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 highest number of deaths across states in the country.

Its positive rate against total number of tests is also increasing. On Monday, it recorded 19.91% against 15.05% on June 3. So far, the state has tested over 16 lakh people (1,600,667 tests), of which, 12,81,972 tested negative.