Maharashtra’s Covid tally goes past 15 lakh, toll close to 40,000; Thane district has 2 lakh cases

MUMBAI: With the addition of 12,134 new Covid-19 cases on Friday, Maharashtra breached the 15 lakh mark for cases -- nearly 22% of the national caseload – and Thane district’s cumulative cases crossed the 2 lakh mark. Thane thus became the third district in Maharashtra, after Pune and Mumbai, to cross the 2 lakh tally.
On Friday, the state’s total caseload was 15,06,018, and with the addition of 302 deaths, the total fatalities in the state climbed to 39,732, very close to the 40,000 mark, which it is likely to breach on Saturday.Maharashtra has already breached the caseload of Russia (12.7 lakh cases), which is the fourth worst-affected country in the world.

After two days of registering the highest-ever singleday tally of Covid cases, there was an over 20% drop -- 2,289 cases -- reported in Mumbai on Friday. The number of deaths continued to be nearly constant, with 47 deaths taking the toll so far to 9,343. The total Covid-19 tally is 2.25 lakh in Mumbai, which works out to a case fatality rate of 4.2%. With the state recording a dip in cases since the last 12 days, the time taken to add the latest 1 lakh cases has gone up to 8 days from the previous 5-6 days. The state had a total of 14 lakh cases on October 1. Officials said that another positive sign for the state is that for the last one week, the daily recoveries have been higher than the daily additions.
However, additional municipal commissioner Ashwini Bhide said that while the overall case fatality rate is still over 4%, the monthly rate has been much lower. “We are managing treatment as well as hospital beds much better now. The surge is cases is mainly due to unlocking of the city,” Bhide said. She said Mumbaikars need to adopt a better behavioural pattern that includes wearing a mask that works like a vaccine against Covid-19.
Of the 47 victims in the city on Friday, 36 had comorbidities and 31 were over 60 years of age. The recovery rate in Mumbai climbed to 84%, with the number of patients recovering on Friday being 2,347, that is, more than the number of daily additions. With the testing in the state plateauing, the BMC has begun conducting more tests -- at around 14,000. While an almost similar number of tests were done on Thursday (14,233) and Friday (14,524), the number of positive cases were lower on Friday.
Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, who inaugurated a Covid hospital in Satara, said that while cases in some countries have reduced, we should not be under any wrong impression and let our guard down. “Social distancing, use of masks and hand hygiene are here to stay and we must all follow it,” Thackeray said. Public health minister Rajesh Tope also inaugurated a tele-ICU facility in Jalgaon and Akola districts.
Meanwhile, Kalyan-Dombivli on Friday reported 367 new patients and nine deaths.
The MMR added 4,616 cases and 87 deaths.