The district reported a record 12-hour increase of 127 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, taking its cumulative tally of active positive cases to 1,368, said health officials on Thursday.
“As many as 87 new cases were reported between 9 p.m. Wednesday and midnight, while a further 40 have been reported since then,” said District Health Officer (DHO) Bhagwan Pawar.
Also read: Authorities grapple with contact tracing as cases increase in Pune
The district, which includes the Pune city, Pune rural and Pimpri-Chinchwad areas, has witnessed a surge of more than 300 new coronavirus cases since Monday this week, while its death toll stands at 86, including three in the city on Wednesday.
“We still have to ascertain the cause of this fresh surge. On Tuesday, the district reported 143 new cases but they were consolidated reports of samples taken previously. The fresh cases are generally coming from the same ‘highly-infected’ clusters,” said Pune Divisional Commissioner Deepak Mhaisekar, speaking to The Hindu .
He further said that the Pune civic body was concentrating on the five most infected wards in the city and taking samples from these areas in a concentrated manner.
Till date, Pune district has reported a total 1,722 cases so far, which includes 1,368 active positive cases still undergoing treatment in hospitals, 268 persons discharged and 86 deaths. 76 of the active cases are in a ‘critical’ condition, said health officials.
As per figures from the Pune Zilla Parishad’s Health Department till Wednesday evening, the total of active positive cases was 1,241, of which Pune city had 1,169 cases, Pimpri-Chinchwad 66 active cases, while rural areas like Baramati, Velhe, Shikrapur had 13 active cases.
Of thee 1,241 cases in Pune city, 982 are presently undergoing treatment in Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) hospitals, 153 in Sassoon and BJ Medical College Hospitals, 27 in civil hospitals, 13 in rural hospitals and 66 in PCMC-run hospitals.
As many as 82 of the 86 deaths have been reported from Pune city and rural areas and three from Pimpri-Chinchwad.
On Wednesday, Maharashtra reported another worrying spike of 597 new cases to take the State’s cumulative tally to 9,915, while 32 new deaths saw the total death toll rising to 432.
Meanwhile, Malegaon in Nashik district, which has emerged as the virus hotspot in north Maharashtra, reported more than 50 new cases since Wednesday
While the rest of the district has only 16 active positive cases, Malegaon’s tally of active positive cases has surged to 235, with a further 12 persons succumbing to the contagion.
Till date, Nashik has recorded 276 cases which include 12 deaths, all from Malegaon.
