After reporting less than 8,000 cases for the last two consecutive days, the cases in the state breached the 4 lakh mark on Wednesday. Maharashtra recorded 9,211 new cases and 298 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the total count to 4,00,651, with 14,463 deaths until now. It is the second time within a week that the highest deaths was reported in the state.
Meanwhile, the day after Mumbai witnessed its lowest record in the last 77 days, there was a 56 per cent rise in the number, with 1,118 new infections being recorded on Wednesday. The total number of cases has now increased to 1,11,991 with 6,244 COVID-19 fatalities so far. Officials have attributed this surge to the highest number of testing conducted in the last 24 hours.
“We have conducted 11,643 tests, of which 1,118 tested positive, compared to 717 of the 8,776 tests conducted on July 27. Moreover, it is the highest ever testing done since the pandemic outbreak,” said an official.
Of the 298 deaths, 139 were from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), followed by 82 in Pune, 25 in Nashik, 24 in Aurangabad, 10 in Akola, eight in Latur, five in Nagpur and four in Kolhapur, while one death was reported from another state.
The number of COVID-19 tests in Mumbai has reached the 5 lakh mark on Wednesday. So far, BMC has conducted 5,05,983 tests, of which 1,72,230 tests were done until July 28. “In the last two months, we have changed the testing strategies, due to which, per day testing has also increased. But the number of cases in Mumbai has stabilised and the weekly growth rate has also dropped below 1 per cent,” said Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner, BMC. Moreover, the doubling rate of the cases has also increased to 72 days.
Till now, 2,39,755 patients have been discharged from various hospitals across the state, of which 85,327 patients are from Mumbai. The recovery rate of Maharashtra is 60 per cent, which is less than Mumbai’s recovery rate of 76 per cent. The fatality rate of Mumbai is higher than the state's fatality rate, which is 3.60 per cent.
So far, a total of 20.16 lakh tests have been conducted in the state, of which nearly 20 per cent were positive. There are 8.88 lakh people in home quarantine and over 40,777 in institutional quarantine.
