Maharashtra adds over 6,000 patients in 24 hours as case count crosses 1.9 lakh

MUMBAI: For the second day in a row, Maharashtra added over 6,000 cases to its Covid-19 tally. Friday’s 6,364 cases are the highest so far in a day, beating the previous high of 6,330 cases on Thursday. With this, the total number of cases in the state are now 1,92,990, having breached the 1.90 lakh mark.
Maharashtra added 198 deaths on Friday, of which 150 are from the last 48 hours and 48 are from previous days.The case fatality rate of the state as on Friday was 4.34%.
Continuing with its addition of a large number of cases, MMR (except Mumbai) reported 3,041-- nearly 50% of the daily addition of cases in the state. Mumbai added 1,338 cases -- 21% of the daily addition. Mumbai continued to be “stable” compared to the satellite cities. Mumbai’s case tally is 82,074. “A month after partial relaxation in lockdown, the city hasn’t seen a big rise in cases or deaths,” said a doctor from the BMC public health department.
Mumbai, however, registered a slight increase in number of deaths as 73 were added in the last 48 hours to take the toll to 4,762. On Thursday the city had reported 58 deaths. The case fatality rate on Friday was 5.8%.
The BMC on Friday began using rapid antigen tests. BMC officials said over 5,000 regular tests too were done. “We are increasing number of tests, and while this may increase number of detections, there is no need to worry about a surge,” said a BMC official.
Health minister Rajesh Tope said he was hopeful the announcement made by ICMR and Bharat Biotech International Ltd (BBIL) is realised soon so the indigenous vaccine announced by them is put to use at the earliest, making the treatment side of Covid-19 ‘irrelevant.’ Tope spoke to Dr Balram Bhargava, DG, ICMR, on Friday regarding the vaccine. The clinical trials will be held in 12 institutes across the country, and the Gillurkar Multispeciality hospital and research institute in Nagpur has been selected from Maharashtra.
Meanwhile, the state is looking to set up district-level committees for inspection and supervision of Covid -19 hospitals.