Maharashtra sees over 4,000 fresh Covid cases after 20 days

The state has crossed the 4,000 mark for fresh cases after 20 days, amid authorities’ fears of a spike in the first week of January in view of the crowding during new year and Christmas celebrations.

With Maharashtra all set to roll out its Covid-19 vaccination drive, the state cabinet discussed the road map for it on Wednesday, even as the state recorded a slight rise in daily infections with 4,382 new cases recorded, pushing the count to 1,954,553.

Satish Bate/HT Photo

The state has crossed the 4,000 mark for fresh cases after 20 days, amid authorities’ fears of a spike in the first week of January in view of the crowding during new year and Christmas celebrations. The toll reached 49,825 after 66 new casualties were reported. Of them, 36 occurred in the past 48 hours, 11 in the last week and the rest 19 were from the period before last week, the health officials said.

On the vaccination drive, with a dry run scheduled on January 8, ministers were informed by the health department that the state was awaiting the Centre’s policy on the drive.

“Health officials informed the state cabinet that the priority list has been decided by the Centre itself, following which healthcare workers, frontline workers, people above 50 years of age and those with co-morbidities even below the age of 50 will be given vaccine shots in the first three phases. The quantity of the vaccine to be distributed in districts will depend upon the stock made available by the Centre. We have completed our preparations, developed the required infrastructure, trained our staff and waiting for the Centre’s plan to start the vaccination programme,” said a senior minister, wishing not to be named.

The cabinet was further informed that Centre will provide Covishield and Covaxin for the immunisation drive in the beginning.

The state is also pushing for free vaccination for the poor and a demand for the same is going to be made with the ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) on Thursday. With second round of dry run to be undertaken in all 36 districts on January 8, the state health minister Rajesh Tope on Wednesday took a meeting of health officers of all districts to review preparations for the state-wide exercise. He directed them to identify the issues and prepare accordingly so that the drill can be completed without any hitch, said a senior health official, requesting anonymity.

It was also decided that all the guardian ministers will remain present in their respective districts on the day of the dry run to monitor the drill.

With preparations for dry run going on full-fledgedly in Maharashtra, there are a few districts where mobile connectivity and internet connectivity could pose a challenge, especially those having tribal areas. In many tribal areas, there is no connectivity and thus operating Co-WIN, a specially designed app by the health ministry, in tribal belts has emerged as a problem before the district administrations.

Many districts such as Palghar, Thane, Nandurbar, Dhule, Gadchiroli, Yavatmal and Chandrapur have tribal population.

The central government has introduced a new Co-WIN app to roll out the vaccination drive across the country. Each and every individual has to be registered on the app and their vaccination status will also be updated after administering the shot, apart from other details. The same process is applicable even for the dry run to be held on January 8.

Dr Dayanand Suryavanshi, district health officer, Palghar district said that they won’t be facing any difficulty for conducting dry run, but during the actual vaccination programme, the problem will arise. “Palghar has tribal areas where network connectivity has been an issue. The dry run is going to be conducted only at three places so we won’t be facing any difficulty, but while starting the first phase of vaccination programme, we have to identify those sites where connectivity is not an issue and thus also have to provide transportation to those who have to travel long distance to reach vaccination centres,” Suryavanshi said.

In that scenario, the second phase would be more challenging as the number of beneficiaries will increase and so would the number of vaccination centres, he said.

Around 16,000 healthcare workers from the district will be vaccinated in the first phase of the drive.

On Tuesday Tope said the people below poverty line cannot afford the vaccine even if two doses of it are priced at Rs500. “People below the poverty line, persons with comorbidities and above 60 years should be given the vaccine for free. We are going to raise this demand during our conference with the MoHFW on Thursday. Though there is no clarity on it as yet, we believe that it has been made free for health workers, frontline workers. The poor, too, should get it for free,” he said.

Meanwhile, two patients who have returned from the United Kingdom (UK) and detected positive with the new strain of coronavirus were discharged after two RT-PCR reports found negative. Of the two, one is from Mumbai and another is from Pune. All the rest are asymptomatic, said state surveillance office Dr Pradip Awate.

On Monday, eight UK returnees tested positive for the new variant and till date there is no rise in their number.

“Till date 4,854 UK returnees who had landed between November 15 and December 23 have been traced till date. RT-PCR tests have been conducted on 3,438 of them 72 samples were found positive. Of them, 71 samples have been referred to the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune to ascertain if they are infected with the new variant,” he said.

Mumbai has clocked 795 cases on Wednesday, taking the case count to 296,320. Of them, active cases are 7,484. There were eight deaths reported and the toll in the city has reached 11,155.