COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra zoomed past the two lakh mark on Saturday, with the State recording a staggering 7,074 new cases, the highest so far in a single day. Less than half of the 2,00,064 recorded cases in the State are currently active — 83,295 to be precise, as per State’s public health department.
The State also recorded 295 deaths from the pandemic on Saturday, of which 124 had occurred in the previous 48 hours and 171 were from an earlier period. 163 of these 171 deaths had occurred in Thane district between the months of April and June, the department said. The total death toll in Maharashtra has now touched 8,671, with a case fatality rate of 4.33%.
“The war is not over yet,” Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said as he stressed on the need to lower the fatality rate at a review meeting with top officials of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
Mumbai, with its high population density, has accounted for a bulk of the COVID-19 cases in the State so far, but in recent days, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) comprising of adjoining districts has seen a far sharper spurt in cases.
Thane district now accounts for nearly a quarter of the State’s COVID-19 infections, with 45,833 cases, in comparison to 83,237 cases in Mumbai city.
1,163 new cases in Mumbai
Mumbai accounted for 1,163 of the new cases on Saturday, while Pune city accounted for 1,120. Within the MMR, the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation reported the highest cases after Mumbai – with 633 new patients — taking its tally close to the 10,000 mark.
Dharavi records just two new cases
Dharavi reported only two new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, its lowest spike since the first week of April, taking its total case tally to 2,311.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) did not reveal if fresh deaths had been reported in the area. For the past few days, the BMC has stopped releasing the data on the number of deaths in the area.
On June 23, Dharavi reported only five new COVID-19 cases. The area has now 519 active cases and 1,704 recovered patients have been discharged so far. As of Friday, the average weekly doubling rate of cases in the area improved to 140 days, and the average growth rate of cases stood at 0.55%.
At the review meeting, the CM called for greater co-ordination among municipal authorities and a ramping up of tracing and testing of likely COVID-19 patients.
He also mooted a further enhancement of institutional quarantine facilities in the State. Currently, 5.96 lakh people are in home quarantine while 41,566 people are in institutional quarantine facilities as per the State public health department’s COVID-19 updates bulletin .
On Saturday, 3,395 patients were discharged, taking the total patients discharged after full recovery to little over 1.08 lakh, giving the State a recovery rate of 54.02%. The State has so far tested 10,80,975 samples for COVID-19, of which 18.51% or 2,00,064 have tested positive for the virus.
Pune district accounts for the third highest number of cases (26,956), followed by Palghar (7,173), Aurangabad (6,271) and Raigad, which has 5,585 cases.
