In a massive spike in COVID-19 cases, 17,864 new COVID-19 cases were reported on Tuesday (March 16) in Maharashtra. This is for the first time this year that over 17,000 COVID-19 cases have been recorded in the state in a single day. The previous highest single-day surge this year was 16,620 on Sunday, March 14.
Besides, 87 COVID-19 deaths were recorded in the day, taking the death toll to 52,996. The case fatality rate in the state is 2.26%.
9,510 patients were discharged in the day, taking the tally to 21,54,253. The recovery rate in the state stands at 91.77%.
Currently, 6,52,531 people are in home quarantine and 6,067 people are in institutional quarantine.
The total number of active cases in Maharashtra is 1,38,813.
The Mumbai circle --which consists of MCGM, Thane, TMC, Navi Mumbai, KDMC, Ulhasnagar MC, Bhivandi Nijampur MC, Mira Bhayandar MC, Palghar, Vasai Virar MC, Raigad, Panvel MC--recorded 3671 new cases on Tuesday.
The Nashik circle--which consists of Nashik, Nashik MC, Malegaon MC, Ahmednagar, Ahmednagar MC, Dhule, Dhule MC, Jalgaon, Jalgaon MC, Nandurbar--reported 2483 fresh COVID-19 cases.
The Pune circle--which includes Pune, PMC, PCMC, Solapur, Solapur MC, Satara--recorded 3994 new cases.
The Kolhapur circle reported 242 new cases, Aurangabad circle 1492, Latur circle 1101, Akola circle 1779, and Nagpur circle recorded 3102 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote to Maharashtra Chief Secretary after the Central team's visit last week and observed that the state is undergoing the second wave of COVID-19 while urging for focus on containment strategies.
"Maharashtra is in the beginning of a second wave of COVID-19 pandemic. Efforts to track, test, isolate cases and quarantine contacts are limited there with no adherence to COVID-19 appropriate behaviour among people both in rural and urban areas," Bhushan wrote in the letter.
Pointing towards contact tracing, the Health Secretary's letter mentioned that the case-contact ratio is more than 1:20 in the state.
"Though it appears high, a deep dive into the methodology of contact tracing revealed that the main concept of contact tracing was not clearly understood by the field level staff, who were mainly listing the immediate family and neighborhood contacts," he added.
The Health Ministry Central team in its observation had written that night curfew, partial lockdowns and weekend lockdowns have a limited impact on curbing the virus transmission.
