Maharashtra on Tuesday witnessed a slight rise in daily corona cases, with 3,106 new infections and 75 covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing its tally to 19,02,458, with 48,876 fatalities till now. Meanwhile, the active cases in the state have dropped to 58,376, which means there are only 3 per cent of patients suffering from coronavirus undergoing treatment at the hospitals.
“Of the 75 deaths logged in on Tuesday, 42 occurred in the last 48 hours and 16 in the last week. Rest 17 deaths are from the period before last week. Out of the 17 deaths, four occurred in Aurangabad, three in Gondia, three in Sangli, two in Nagpur, two in Pune, one in Solapur, one in Wardha, and one in Nashik,” said Dr. Pradip Awate, state surveillance officer.
Mumbai, meanwhile recorded 503 new cases and 11 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, increasing the total count to 2,87,816 with 11,019 fatalities so far. The doubling rate of cases has now increased to 359 days, while weekly growth has dropped to 0.21 per cent.
Officials said they have been taking all precautions as a potential second wave may hit the state in January. “There is no doubt that our situation is showing an improvement as we are getting less Covid cases. This is the reason, the period of completing one lakh cases is increasing if compared with the previous figures,” said a health official.
BMC municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani said that the BMC has ensured that all precautions are taken to check any surge in case. The BMC will, for one, continue with 14,000-15,000 Covid-19 tests daily.
However, a senior doctor from a government hospital said that active tracing needs to be stepped up across the state in light of the UK variant. "The mutated virus has been in circulation since September. While stopping flights to the UK will cut down future transmission, we also need to focus on tracing those passengers who arrived in Mumbai/Maharashtra in the last 15 days," he said.
