Maha virus case count goes up to 4,666; death toll rises to 232

Maharashtra’s coronavirus case count on Monday went up to 4,666 with the addition of 466 patients — the second-highest single-day jump after Sunday’s 552 cases.

Maharashtra’s coronavirus case count on Monday went up to 4,666 with the addition of 466 patients — the second-highest single-day jump after Sunday’s 552 cases.

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On the day the nationwide lockdown was partially relaxed across the state, Mumbai crossed the 3,000-case mark as 308 more people tested positive, taking the city’s count to 3,032.

The death toll of the state touched 232 as nine deaths were recorded on Monday. Of them, seven are in Mumbai, taking the city’s toll to 139, and two in Malegaon.

The state health minister Rajesh Tope said there was no need to be afraid as although the number is rising, there is improvement in the situation. “The doubling rate of the state has now reached seven days, up from two days. We are trying to increase it even further,” Tope said. He said the state is conducting maximum tests across the country. ”So far, we have conducted 76,000 tests in the state and in Mumbai alone, 50,000 tests were conducted. We are also doing surveillance and contract tracing aggressively,” he added.

However, it continued to be higher than the national mortality rate of 3.14% till Sunday, revealed data from the state medical education department.

Meanwhile, three new districts — Parbhani, Nandurbar and Chandrapur — reported its first cases in the past few days. Chandrapur has two and Parbhani and Nandurbar one case each. After this, only four districts — Nanded, Wardha, Bhandara and Gadchiroli — do not have a single case, as of now.

“The number is still not very alarming, except that of Mumbai. All the other areas are quite under control. In Mumbai, it is limited to certain areas and we still believe that the growth is not exponential,” said a senior official, requesting anonymity.

“The concern should be that they [cases] are not spreading to other places and that with geometric progression. The number of infected people in the three districts (Chandrapur, Parbhani and Nandurbar) is minimal,” said the official.

The state health department has conducted 76,092 tests at various public and private facilities till date. Of them, 71,611 people tested negative. State currently has 364 containment zones. Around 5,648 survey teams, comprising doctors and assisting staff, have screened more than 20.85 lakh people. A total of 331 patients have been discharged from hospitals. It has also kept 6,879 patients at government quarantine facilities, while 93,655 are home quarantined, said state health officials.

Lockdown was imposed in the state from the midnight of March 23 and was lifted partially after 27 days on Monday.

Even as the number kept rising, the state government lifted restrictions in many of the areas. It has allowed construction work in the municipal corporation and municipality areas, including Mumbai and Pune, with a rider that prior permission from the municipal commissioner will be needed. It has allowed taking up all urgent pre-monsoon works. It has also decided to allow industries to operate in all rural areas of the state. Manufacturing and other industrial establishments in special economic zones, industrial townships of only non-containment areas are allowed, except in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and Pune Municipal Corporations (PMC) limits. It has further allowed construction activities of roads, buildings and irrigation projects outside municipal corporation limits.

“It will take a couple of days to streamline all things. We need to understand their difficulties and what more changes are required. All these need to be understand and acted upon. As public health is our top priority, we have put many conditions on industrial for operating,” said Harshdeep Kamble, development commissioner (industries).

Officials said that many of them would be facing other difficulties such as requirement of labour, work order, availability of raw material etc, and thus a few days are needed to start operations.

Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government has set up an online system to provide permission to industries to operate and has received over 1,300 applications so far. Officials said that they are still collating the figures on how many industries resumed operations from Monday.

“To provide permission to the industries to start their operations in the state, we have set up an online system where they have to apply. They will have to submit requisite details, such as number of employees, travel arrangements for workers and other such details. They will also have to give self-certification on the conditions such as social distancing and others, which are required to be fulfilled, for starting operations,” said the development commissioner

“The applications will be reviewed by the concerned district collector and permissions are being issued within hours. We are still collating the data,” Kamble said.

“We have given permission to 1,355 industrial units for starting operations today. Of them ,752 are in MIDC areas and 603 are outside MIDC areas. Most of the permissions are given in Nashik district. Apart from this, Ahmednagar, Satara, Sangli, Amravati, Nagpur and Yavatmal are the districts where permissions have been given to the industrial units,” said a senior official from the industries department, wishing not to be named.

Tope on Monday said that 75,000 rapid testing or antibody test kits will be made available to Maharashtra and the tests will be carried out soon. The minister also said that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) tablets will also be given as prophylaxis to health workers, quarantined people. However, those with heart ailments and under the age of 15 and over age 60 will not be given HCQ.

“The Centre has now approved rapid testing, and we have decided to conduct 75,000 rapid tests. It will be done as per the advisory of the Centre. Those with high fever and persistent cough will undergo this test. Similarly, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has also said that hydroxychloroquine can be given as prophylaxis to limited number of people like healthcare workers, those in quarantine,” Tope said. The minister hinted that HCQs will be used for quarantine patients in Dharavi.

The state government has also got the nod from the ICMR to start plasma therapy. The plasma from the recovered patients can be used on critical patients, to help them build antibodies to fight Covid-19.

The minister also outlined the zoning done by the state government to allow lockdown relaxation. He said that those districts that have had no new Covid-19 cases in the last 14 days will be marked as an orange zone, while the districts where there have been no new case in the last 28 days will be marked as a green zone. The districts that have more than 15 cases are marked as red zone.