Maharashtra’s ‘sugar heartland’ witnessed a surge in COVID-19 cases after five members of a family in Sangli district in the western part of the State tested positive, said authorities on Wednesday. The State’s tally of positive cases rose to 112.
While details are awaited, it is believed that the members of this family from Sangli’s Islampur tehsil either themselves had a history of travel to West Asia or were close contacts of previously diagnosed cases.
On Monday, four members of a family from the same tehsil with a history of travel to Saudi Arabia tested positive, making them the first cases in the district.
With this, Sangli now has a total nine positive COVID-19 cases. Hitherto untouched by the scourge of the virus, Sangli and Satara districts have witnessed a spurt in positive cases in the last 72 hours.
On Tuesday, the Sangli district police lodged a complaint against a father-son duo of a family hailing from Nepal and living in the district’s Miraj tehsil for violating home quarantine orders.
According to authorities, the family of four, which had settled in Karnal in Miraj for some years, used to eke out a living by doing menial tasks and freelancing as labourers. Earlier this month, the father and the son had returned from Nepal and had been kept under strict quarantine, which they violated.
On Monday, Maharashtra's sugar-belt districts recorded their first positive cases after a 45-year woman from Satara with travel history to Dubai was tested. A second case in Satara emerged after a 63-year-old gentleman, who recently returned from California, tested positive for the virus.
While Ahmednagar district has recorded three cases thus far, the total number of positive cases in Pune district stands at 31. The number of patients in Pune is 19 while Pimpri-Chinchwad has recorded 12 positive cases. The third Ahmednagar patient who tested positive is said to have no history of foreign travel, which has caused concern among authorities.
Meanwhile, a Pune-based couple, who were the first COVID-19 positive cases in Maharashtra, are set to be discharged from Naidu Hospital after their samples following the 14-day isolation period, as well as their repeat samples taken 24 hours later, tested negative, said health officials.
The couple, who were admitted on March 9, would be taken home in a Pune Municipal Corporation ambulance on the occasion of ‘Gudi Padwa’ on March 25, said Pune Mayor Murlidhar Mohol, expressing relief and happiness.
He said that the other immediate contacts of the couple who had tested positive were on the road to recovery as well. On March 10, three other family members of the Pune couple as well as the cab driver who ferried them from Mumbai airport to Pune on their return from Dubai on March 1 had tested positive.
The Pune couple had travelled to Dubai in the last week of February and were part of a 40-member tour group and returned to India on March 1.
