State sees highest spike in cases for 2nd day in a row

For a second consecutive day, Maharashtra reported its highest 24-hour spike in coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases with 1,602 new infections on Thursday, taking its tally to 27,524. On Wednesday, the state had reported 1,495 cases.

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Of Thursday’s infections, 20,441 are active cases, said state health officials.

However, officials, said there is no exponential growth and that the state has also not reached the stage of community transmission — where the source of infection is not known.

Mumbai also recorded its highest one-day jump with 991 cases, taking its count to 16,738.

The state’s toll breached the 1,000 mark after 44 deaths were recorded on Thursday, bringing the number to 1,019. Of them, 25 are in Mumbai, 10 in Navi Mumbai, five in Pune, two in Aurangabad and one each in Panvel and Kalyan. Of the 44 deceased, 34 were patients with comorbid conditions, said health officials. The death toll of Mumbai is 621.

As the Centre is planning more relaxations post May 17, when the third phase of the lockdown ends, the number of fresh cases is rising rapidly in Maharashtra. Since more than a week (from May 6), the state is getting over 1,000 cases daily and by May 17, it is likely to breach the 30,000 mark. In May (last 14 days) alone, the state has reported as many as 17,026 cases. The first case was reported on March 9.

The number of fresh cases has increased significantly this month, considering the average was around 500 new cases daily till April-end, which turned into four digits since May 6.

The daily cases in the past eight days are as follows — May 6: 1,233; May 7: 1,216; May 8: 1,089; May 9: 1,165; May 10: 1,278; May 11: 1,230; May 12: 1,026 and May 13: 1,495. Besides, on May 10, the state also declared an additional 665 cases respectively, saying that they were registered in the past few days and are being declared as per the Central government’s directive to bring the data at par with the national figures on ICMR’s website.

Between April 19 and 30, the state was getting around 500 new cases daily.

In the past fourteen days since May 1, the state has reported as many as 17,026 cases, whereas the total number of cases registered in April was 10,201.

Dr Tatyarao Lahane, director, Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER,) said, “The numbers are rising, but it cannot be called as exponential growth as in that case, the numbers multiply for daily cases. If the number of fresh cases becomes double on a daily basis, only then it can be called exponential growth.”

“The state has also not reached the community transmission stage as it comes with exponential growth only,” he added.

Meanwhile, the number of recoveries jumped to 6,059 with 512 more patients recovering on Thursday.

Dr Pradeep Vyas, principal secretary, health department, said that the doubling rate of cases has improved to 11.1 days from 10 days. The state government has decided to take the rate to 20 days in the days to come, said the health minister Rajesh Tope. The state government had also resolved to bring the entire state under the green zone by this month-end.

So far, 15,465 people have been kept in institutional quarantine in the state and over 3,15,686 people have been put under home quarantine.

On Thursday, the state also completed 52 days of lockdown, which was imposed from the midnight of March 23, a day before the nationwide lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was partially lifted on April 20 in areas where there are no cases or they are minimal in number.

On Monday, the health department also declared it had conducted 2,40,145 tests at various public and private facilities across Maharashtra. Of them, 2,12,621 people tested negative.

State currently has 1,512 active containment zones. A total of 14,253 survey teams comprising doctors and assisting staff have screened more than 59.04 lakh people.

The mortality rate of the state has come down to 3.76% (975 deaths) on Wednesday, from 7.41% (148 cases) on April 13. However, it continued to be higher than the national mortality rate of 3.27% (2,549 deaths) till Wednesday, revealed data of the state medical education department.