Maharashtra is now witnessing a dip in COVID-19 cases on a daily basis. The state reported 17,794 new infections and 416 fatalities on Friday, taking the total count to 13,00,757, with 34,761 deaths so far. On the other hand, 19,512 patients have recovered in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of patients being discharged to 9,92,806.
This week, the daily caseload average was 18,423, a dip from 21,190 for the whole of last week. Of the state’s 36 districts, 92.91 per cent or 11.92 lakh cases and 94 per cent or 32,284 deaths were reported in 20 districts, according to the statistics.
Mumbai also witnessed a drop in cases on Friday. 1,876 new cases and 48 deaths were reported, taking its total count to 1,94,177 with 8,703 fatalities so far. The recovery rate of Mumbai has increased to 80.75 per cent.
Of the 416 fatalities, 228 are from the last 48 hours and 106 are from last week. The remaining 82 deaths are from the period before it. Of the total deaths, 97 were in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), followed by 80 in Pune, 74 in Nashik, 73 in Nagpur, 54 in Kolhapur, 12 in Aurangabad and 11 each in Latur and Akola, while four deaths were from other states.
Senior health officials said they have been asked to monitor the situation on a regular basis by contacting officials at the tehsil level in these districts. Moreover, dedicated officials are being appointed to monitor the situation in these districts to ensure that outbreak is brought under control at the earliest. “Districts are being directed to ramp up health facilities with adequate number of beds, oxygen supply and ventilators along with contact tracing. By doing this, the district administrations would be able to contain the spread,” said an official from the Health Department.
State Health Minister Rajesh Tope, in his press conference, said that the district administrations have been directed to increase testing and its reach of tracing suspected contacts. “The state average of tests is 40,000 per million, which needs to be maintained by all the districts. The ones with fewer tests per million have been directed to increase them so that the spread is arrested,” he said.
So far, a total of 62.80 lakh tests have been conducted in the state, of which nearly 20.69 per cent were positive. There are 19.29 lakh people in home quarantine and over 32,747 in institutional quarantine.
