Health workers wearing Personal Protective Equipments (PPE) suits interact with residents of a building during a door-to-door COVID-19 coronavirus screening in Dharavi slum area in Mumbai. Pic/PTI
Maharashtra crossed 5 lakh COVID-19 cases on Saturday, even as the state recorded its highest daily count of more than 12,800 cases. Since a high number of patients were also discharged the same day, the state's recovery rate continued to rise up to 67.26 per cent.
After a dip for a couple of days, Mumbai's daily count rose to more than 1,300 cases, while Pune continued to lead with 1,894 cases. A high count of cases was seen in other districts as well—Nashik (736), Jalgaon (656), Ahmednagar (607) and Thane (536). While 11,081 patients were discharged in the state, 1,454 were discharged in Mumbai after a full recovery. While there are 1.47 lakh COVID-19 patients who are currently being treated in the state, Mumbai's count of active cases is less than 20,000, and it ranks third highest after Pune with 41,266 and Thane with 22,943 active cases.
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State health department officials reported 275 COVID-related deaths as the fatality report now stands at 3.45 per cent. Mumbai had the highest number of fatalities with 58 deaths followed by Pune with 47 deaths. In other districts, there were 21 deaths in Thane, 20 in Pimpri Chinchwad, 13 in Raigad, 12 in Kalyan-Dombivli, nine each in Mira Bhayandar, Vasai Virar and Kolhapur. Civic officials said that among the 58 deaths in Mumbai, 41 patients were suffering from other ailments and 43 deaths involved senior citizens. The city's recovery rate currently stands at 78 per cent and the doubling rate is 89 days. Mumbai now has more than 6,700 COVID-related deaths.
Senior civic officials reported that while the number of containment zones in slum areas are much lower, the numbers are rising in residential buildings. "Currently, there are 608 active containment zones in slum areas while 5,484 buildings (or a portion of them) have been sealed. We have released 789 containment zones and we are further ramping up our testing. In the coming week, we are trying to increase RT-PCR tests by 1,000-2,000 per day so that we can cover a larger population," said Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner. He added that while 60 per cent of the tests being carried out are RT-PCR amounting to around 6,000 tests a day, the remaining are antigen tests that amount to 5,000 tests a day.
The city's growth rate continued to drop to 0.78 per cent and 13 administrative wards have a growth rate higher than the city's average led by R Central ward with 1.37 per cent. Only three wards have a growth rate above one per cent. On Saturday 26 new cases were reported in Dadar and 19 in Mahim.
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