Mumbai: Maharashtra on Saturday reported 3,218 new infections and 51 Covid-19 deaths, pushing its tally to 19,38,854, with 49,631 fatalities till now.
Meanwhile, Mumbai reported less than 600 cases in the last 24 hours, with 594 new infections and seven Covid-19 deaths, increasing the total count to 2,94,661, with 11,132 fatalities so far.
Maharashtra has reported fewer than 5,000 cases for the past 28 straight days, although the state authorities have expressed fear of a spike in the first week of January in view of the crowding during Christmas and New Year celebrations.
The state completed a total of 1,28,23,834 Covid tests with 76,201 tests conducted on Friday. The positivity rate for the day has declined to 4.62% against the overall positivity rate of the state that stood at 15.09%.
“A total of 4,471 UK returnees who had landed between November 15 and December 23 have been traced till date. RT-PCR tests have been conducted on 3,273 of them, and 67 samples were found positive. Of them, 29 are from Mumbai, 13 in Pune, seven in Thane, eight in Nagpur and two each in Nashik, Aurangabad, Raigad, Buldhana and one each from Nanded and Washim,” said state surveillance officer Dr Pradip Awate.
He said that 61 samples have been referred to the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune to ascertain if they are infected with the new variant. The state has also traced 422 people who have come in contact with the UK returnees and 26 of them have tested positive for Covid-19, he added.