Maharashtra’s Covid-19 toll crosses 40K, last 10,000 deaths in 25 days

Maharashtra on Saturday crossed the 40,000 mark for Covid-19 fatalities, seven months since the first case was reported. With 308 new fatalities, the state’s toll

Maharashtra on Saturday crossed the 40,000 mark for Covid-19 fatalities, seven months since the first case was reported. With 308 new fatalities, the state’s toll went up to 40,040, while 11,416 new infections took the tally to 151,7434. Mumbai, meanwhile, reported 2,203 new cases, taking the city’s tally up to 227,276, while its toll stands at 9,391.

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State clocked the last 10,000 Covid-19 deaths in just 25 days . The first 10,000 were crossed in 125 days (on July 11) after the first case was detected on March 9. Next 10,000 were reported in 30 days. The 30,000-mark was breached in another 30 days.

Of the fatalities reported on Saturday, 168 deaths were from the past two days, 60 from past week, while remaining 80 were from the period before it. Mumbai and Pune district retained their first and second positions in term of new infections and fatalities.

Pune saw addition of 46 deaths, while Mumbai reported 48 deaths. Ahmednagar and Satara in western Maharashtra reported 24 and 26 fatalities respectively. State’s case fatality rate (CFR) stands at 2.64%.

Pune added 1,772 new infections, which included 724 from city, 634 from rural parts and 414 from Pimpri Chinchwad. Nashik, Ahmednagar, Nagpur and Satara continued to clock high number of cases with addition of 741, 813, 595 and 452 cases respectively. Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), which comprises nine municipal corporations and rural parts of three districts, accounted for 36.82% or 4,103 cases of state’s tally.

While the state has been reporting a decline in the daily caseload over the past three weeks, the case fatality rate (CFR) in the state has not reduced in proportion. The CFR in first 10 days of October rose to 2.53% from 2.04% in September. The CFR had fallen to 1.91% in first 15 days of September to rise to 2.18% the next fortnight. The rise in CFR in over the last more than three weeks has resulted in the state’s overall death rate hovering around 2.6%, while the death rate of a few other states and the national rate has steadily declined.

The high rate of mortality is attributed to the late referral of infected people to health facilities, lacklustre approach of the machinery in tracing suspected people and low rate of testing. “We are still getting the infected patients to the facilities as late as third or fourth days, against the targeted period of first 48 hours. These patients not only risk their life, but also infect others in large numbers. The tracing of suspected contacts is as low as less than 10 in most of the districts, against the expected ratio of 20 people per infection. We expect the ratio to improve after the launch of “My Family, My Responsibility” last month,” said an official from health department requesting anonymity.

State health minister Rajesh Tope, admitted that the state’s test rate per million population needs to improve. “We are at sixth position, even below Andhra Pradesh, Telangana when it comes to per million tests. We are not testing at the fullest of the 400 laboratories opened in the state. The tracing ratio, too, needs to be improved to 1:20 so that we can contain the spread of infection and CFR can be brought below 1%,” Tope said.

Tope said that Maharashtra’s CFR is high compared to other states, but it is also because of the transparency authorities have been maintaining in terms of cases and deaths.

State conducted 82,064 tests in last 24 hours at a positivity rate of 13.91%. Overall positivity rate of the state stands at 20.05%. State’s recovery rate improved to 82.76% after 26,440 patients were reported recovered on Saturday.