Maha records highest 3,752 Covid-19 cases, 100 deaths

By Quaid Najmi

Mumbai, June 18 (SocialNews.XYZ) Maharashtra notched the highest single-day spike of 3,752 Covid-19 cases, over a month after the previous high of 3,607 on May 11, while deaths came down to 100, down from the peak of 178 recorded on June 15, health officials said here on Thursday.

With this, the state's death toll climbed to 5,751 and total cases shot up to 1,20,504 till date, with a recovery rate of 50.49 per cent.

For most days in June, the state has been recording three-digit highs of deaths and 3K plus figures of new patients.

This comes to roughly one death every 14 minutes, and a whopping 156 new cases notched every hour in the state on Thursday, with a mortality rate of 4.77 per cent.

With 100 deaths, the state's toll stands at 5,751 while the total number of coronavirus patients catapulted from Wednesday's 116,752 to 120,504 on Thursday -- both highest in the country.

The health department said that of the total number of cases declared till date, 53,901 are active cases, and this number is favourable vis-a-vis the number of patients cured, indicating a positive sign.

Of the total 100 fatalities on Thursday, Mumbai notched 67 deaths -- taking the city's death toll up from Wednesday's 3,244 to 3,311 now, while the number of Covid-19 positive patients here went up by 1,288 cases to touch 62,875 now.

The situation in Dharavi -- Asia's biggest slum -- continues to improve with 28 new cases, taking the total to 2,134 cases and the number of fatalities remaining unchanged at 77.

Besides Mumbai's 67 deaths, there were 31 fatalities in Thane, and one each in Palghar and Nagpur.

On the positive side, a total of 1,672 fully cured patients returned home on Thursday, taking the number of those discharged to 60,838 now, relatively higher than the 53,901 active cases.

In another heartening development, the health department said that in the past 100 days, the spread of Covid-19 has been arrested in the state with reducing weekly average growth in cases and the increase in the doubling rate of patients.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has directed all labs to submit their Covid-19 test reports directly to the BMC, and asked all hospitals to report Corona deaths within 48 hours to ensure better coordination among various departments, said an official.

After the first case was detected here on March 9, the weekly growth in cases on March 31 was 12 per cent (doubling time 3.5 days), on April 30 it was 7.0 per cent (10.2 days), May 31 it was 4 per cent (20.1 days) and on June 16 it stood at 3 per cent (25.9 days).

The MMR (Thane Division) remains a jittery issue with a total of 4,153 Covid-19 deaths, while the number of positive cases touched 88,987 on Thursday.

Thane with 21,093 cases and 673 fatalities has emerged as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state.

Pune district has dropped to the third position with 14,000 patients and 610 deaths till now.

The next major region of concern is Nashik Division with 379 deaths and 5,130 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad Division with 185 fatalities and 3,709 cases, and Akola Division with 96 deaths and 1,937 cases.

There's Latur Division with 35 deaths and 710 cases, Kolhapur Division with 40 deaths and 1,642 patients, and Nagpur Division with 15 deaths and 1,435 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home-quarantine decreased from Wednesday's 582,699 to 581,650 now, while those in institutional quarantine decreased from 27,582 on Wednesday to 26,740 now.

In another relief for the patients, there are as many as 92,141 beds currently available in 2,203 institutions for Covid-19 related quarantine in the state.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: q.najmi@ians.in)

Source: IANS