Maha Covid-19 cases rise by 5,537, highest in a day; toll is 8,053

Maharashtra on Wedn-esday recorded its sharpest single-day jump in Covid-19 cases with 5,537 more infections, taking the count to 180,298. The toll crossed 8,000

Maharashtra on Wedn-esday recorded its sharpest single-day jump in Covid-19 cases with 5,537 more infections, taking the count to 180,298. The toll crossed 8,000 to touch 8,053 after the addition of 198 fatalities on Wednesday.

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Mumbai saw 1,487 new cases and 75 fatalities, taking the tally to 79,145 and toll to 4,631. The state health department has, however, said of the latest fatalities, 69 are from the past 48 hours, while the remaining 129 are from the past few weeks.

Many district and civic administrations in the state have announced a reimposition of stricter and curfew-like lockdowns for the next eight to 10 days in the backdrop of the sudden spike in cases. Besides the Thane, Mira-Bhayander, Kalyan-Dombivli corporations, districts like Nashik, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg have imposed stricter lockdown norms. In Mumbai, too, police have prevented people from stepping out of the house unnecessarily. Few other districts like Jalgaon are planning such restrictions for a few days to contain the spread of the virus.

In fact, many districts have reported an increased growth rate of cases in rural parts, rather than in urban areas, after activities were opened up on May 22. For instance, in rural Jalgaon, cases rose from 252 on May 21 to 2,652 till Tuesday, while in Aurangabad rural the spike was from 20 cases to 1,011. In Nashik and Solapur rural, cases jumped to 877 and 314 from 113 and 10 respectively. The growth in cases in the corporation areas of these districts was comparatively less, data revealed. Water supply and sanitation minister and Jalgaon’s guardian minister Gulabrao Patil said the social taboo about the virus is making the task of tracing its spread difficult.

“Infected people report very late due to the fear of ill-treatment in society. Of the 234 deaths, 70 were reported in 14 to 42 hours of their admission and most of them had comorbidities. People have been hiding the symptoms, making it very difficult in tracing and early treatment. This led to the rise in number of patients and deaths too. We are now planning awareness programmes, besides aggressive tracing with the help of village-level machinery,” he said.

Laxminarayan Mishra, collector, Ratnagiri, said stricter lockdown was imposed for eight days, after they found large-scale violations of norms. “The number of active cases has reached 140 after we found a rise in cases last week. Operation break the chain is to restrict the social transmission of the virus,” he said.

The reversal of the lockdown at local levels has put a break on the state government’s plan of opening up activities. “There were plans of allowing more staff in red zones and interdistrict transport services in non-red zones as part of our Mission Begin Again, but the sudden surge in case put a spanner in the works. Local authorities have approached us for stricter restrictions of lockdown for the next few days in their bid to contain the spread. Besides the stricter lockdown, local authorities have been asked to ramp up health infrastructure and plan aggressive tracing of patients,” said a state government official.

Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday had said that while extending the lockdown, the government was planning a few more relaxations in a calibrated manner. The decision by local authorities of making the restriction stricter has created confusion among the people. Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) state chief, Chandrakant Patil, criticised the government for the contradictory decisions by state and local bodies and has asked government to bring clarity on the policy.

Dr Sanjay Pattiwar, public health consultant, said that civic bodies and district collectors should pull up the sleeves and go chasing the virus. “Government appears to be confused over relaxations from the ongoing lockdown as the local authorities and state are not on the same page on this front. It is easy in the rural areas to contain the virus, but it is spreading rapidly in some districts because of the lack of effort. Even in the rest of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), the tracing of suspected cases should be done aggressively. Mumbai could succeed in containing it, only because of aggressive tracing done in areas like Dharavi and Koliwada,” he said.

Dr Pattiwar said that civic bodies and district authorities should now spare health workers from the contact-tracing job as they are overburdened and should instead rope in volunteers and NGOs.

Meanwhile, the state’s case fatality rate (CFR) dropped to 4.47% from 4.69% on June 16, the day on which there was an addition of 1,328 deaths as part of the reconciliation of data. The CFR was 3.79% on June 15. The recovery rate slightly dropped to 51.67% after 93,154 patients were reported to have recovered from the infection. The recovery rate was 52.59% on June 28.