For the second consecutive day, Maharashtra witnessed more than 500 Covid-19 deaths on Wednesday, making it the highest single-day deaths reported since the pandemic outbreak. In the past 24 hours, as many as 568 patients succumbed to the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus in the state, increasing the death toll to 61,911 so far.
The previous highest was 519 which was reported just a day before. Meanwhile, for the third day in a row more than 50,000 patients recovered across the state, taking the total count of recovered patients to 32,68,449.
Meanwhile, the state witnessed close to 68,000 fresh corona cases in the last 24 hours, with 68,468 new cases being reported on Wednesday, pushing its tally to 40,27,827 cases till now. The positivity rate has increased to 16.36 per cent, while the Covid fatality rate remains below 2 per cent.
Mumbai, meanwhile witnessed less than 8,000 cases for the third consecutive in the last 24 hours, with 7,684 new infections and 62 covid-19 fatalities being reported on Wednesday, increasing the total count to 6,01,590, with 12,501 deaths so far. Meanwhile, the recovery rate has increased to 84 per cent, with 5,03,053 patients being discharged across the city since the pandemic outbreak.
Health experts said Maharashtra is likely to hit a plateau in the next 10 days and a drop in cases may start from the middle of next month.
BMC additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani said the administration would not get carried away with the seemingly sharp drop in cases over the weekend. “Although we had fewer admissions than in the last few days in our major Covid hospitals such as Seven Hills in Andheri and the jumbo facilities at Nesco, Goregaon and BKC, we will remain vigilant,” he said.
Kakani further said that every death is unfortunate, but if we see the overall picture, the daily death rate is still under 0.6. Even our overall case fatality rate, which was 5 in October-November 2020 has dropped to 2.1. “The city’s death rate due to Covid-19 in this month is lower than the national average,” he added.
Senior health officials said when the first wave subsided in October, there was euphoria created that the Covid-19 had gone. The government in the last five months should have anticipated a second wave and ramped up its medical infrastructure like increasing the number of hospital beds, ventilators, ICU facilities and also appointed more medical personnel,”he said.
A senior doctor from a BMC hospital said that deaths could rise in the coming week because of the high number of hospitalizations over the last 10-15 days. “Usually, the number of Covid deaths go up a fortnight after a rise in cases,’’ said the doctor.
