Maharashtra Coronavirus News Highlights: The Bombay High Court Friday praised the Mumbai Police for working against all odds amid the ongoing pandemic and the state lockdown. The court urged public to cooperate with the police under such unprecedented circumstances.
Earlier, the state government extended the ongoing lockdown restrictions to curb Covid-19, till November 30. The state government has been easing restrictions in a phased manner. “…to take certain emergency measures to prevent and contain the spread of virus, the Government in exercise of the powers conferred under Section 2 of the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, read with all other enabling provisions of The Disaster Management Act, 2005, it is expedient to extend the lockdown in the entire state of Maharashtra till midnight of November 30, 2020,” said the order issued by chief secretary Sanjay Kumar. A decision on reopening temples, schools and colleges is yet to be taken.
Maharashtra’s coronavirus tally on Thursday increased to 16,66,668 with 5,902 new cases being reported, a health official said. The state also recorded 156 deaths, taking the death toll due to COVID-19 to 43,710, he said. A total of 7,883 patients were discharged after treatment during the day, taking the tally of recovered people to 14,94,809. There are 1,27,603 active patients as of now. Mumbai city reported 1,120 new cases which pushed its caseload to 2,55,360, while death toll in the city rose to 10,229 with 33 fatalities being recorded on Thursday.
Sanitisation process underway at Deccan Gymkhana Bus Stand in Pune.
Doctors at Gokuldas Tejpal (GT) hospital have now started pushing the state government to consider converting GT hospital back into a non-Covid facility, as routine non-Covid procedures have been on hold since March. Read More
After witnessing a drop in the number of active Covid-19 patients for over a month, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Saturday registered a slight increase as the number of new patients was higher than those who recovered, for the first time since September 25. Read More
Pune district reported 715 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking its infection count to 7,22,820, while 29 deaths increased the toll to 7,857, an official said on Friday. Pune city accounted for 284 of the new cases followed by 161 in Pimpri Chinchwad. "The caseload in PMC limits is 1,60,961, while it is 87,594 in PCMC. A total of 322 people were discharged during the day," he added. (PTI)
The crime branch of Mumbai Police raided a factory at Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh where fake N-95 masks were being manufactured, an official said on Friday. N-95 masks are in great demand since the outbreak of coronavirus. The raid was conducted on Thursday following the information given by a man arrested earlier by Unit 3 of the crime branch, an official said. During the raid, the police seized 5,000 sub-standard masks, a printing machine and two printing screens worth Rs 11 lakh, he said, adding that one person was arrested. (PTI)
Amravati district in Maharashtra reported 48 new coronavirus positive cases, which took its caseload to 16,248 on Friday.
With the recovery of 118 persons during the day, the count of such patients in the district rose to 15,199. This took Amravati's recovery rate to 93.54 per cent, news agency PTI reported.
The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation has sought Rs 3,600 crore from the state government for payment of salaries and other essential expenses, Transport Minister Anil Parab said on Friday.
The state-run corporation has not paid the salaries of its employees for the last three months, and to pay them was its priority, the minister said.
Parab, who is also the chairman of the MSRTC, told reporters that the corporation was trying to raise money through external means too. (PTI)
With the addition of 6,190 coronavirus positive cases, Maharashtra's infection count reached 16,72,411 on Friday, news agency PTI reporting citing a state health official. The state reported 127 deaths during the day, which took the fatality count to 43,837, he said. A total of 8,241 patients were discharged after treatment on Friday. With this, the recovery count rose to 15,03,050. The number of active patients in the state now stands at 1,25,418, the official said.
People throng market places in Mumbai, with the onset of the festival season, amid #COVID19 pandemic; visuals from Crawford Market. There are 18,984 active cases in the state capital at present.
Praising the Mumbai Police for working against all odds, the Bombay High Court has said that the police personnel are carrying out their duty under a lot of pressure amid the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, and hence cooperation from public is required, PTI reported. A division bench of Justices S S Shinde and M S Karnik on Thursday also said that the Mumbai police are considered as one of the best in the world. "The job of a police officer is difficult during these times of pandemic. The Mumbai police is already under a lot of pressure. They have to do 12-hour duty and then there are processions and morchas for which bandobast is required," Justice Shinde said.
The Civil Hospital in Aurangabad in Maharashtra is set to start a new facility that will deal with post-COVID-19 care, an official said on Friday. Post-COVID-19 outdoor patient department (OPD) services will start in the new facility from the first week of November, the official told PTI. The Civil Hospital, located in Chikalthana area of the city, has set up the centre to treat recovered patients suffering from complications related to the coronavirus infection, he said. (PTI)
Thane district of Maharashtra recorded 1,802 fresh cases of coronavirus, taking its tally to 2,10,096, an official said on Friday. The official said the death toll increased to 5,302 after 40 more patients succumbed to the infection in the district on Thursday. He said the COVID-19 recovery rate of the district is 92.76 per cent (1,94,881), while the mortality rate is 2.52 per cent (5,302). (PTI)
The Maharashtra government on Thursday extended the ongoing lockdown restrictions to curb Covid-19, till November 30.The state government has been easing restrictions in a
phased manner. "...to take certain emergency measures to prevent and contain the spread of virus, the Government in exercise of the powers conferred under Section 2 of the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, read with all other enabling provisions of The Disaster Management Act, 2005, it is expedient to extend the lockdown in the entire state of Maharashtra till midnight of November 30, 2020," said the order issued by chief secretary Sanjay Kumar. (PTI)
The tally of COVID-19 cases in Mumbai increased to 2,55,362 on Thursday with 1,120 new cases, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said. The death toll in the city reached 10,186 with 33 fresh fatalities being reported, it said. The civic body said the city has 18,367 active COVID- 19 patients. 1,824 patients were discharged from hospitals in the last 24 hours, which took the number of recovered patients to 2,26,041, about 88 per cent of the total caseload. The number of COVID-19 tests carried out in the city has crossed 14.98 lakh. (PTI)
With strict norms in place, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is going to reopen 89 of the total 204 gardens and parks across the city for local residents from November 1. Visitors will only be allowed to walk or jog, and all group activities are banned. The use of the common play area, open gym, lawn and benches is also forbidden.
In his order, Municipal Commissioner Vikram Kumar said the gardens will be open for two-hour slots in the morning and evening, from 6 am to 8 am and from 5 pm to 7 pm. It will be mandatory to follow guidelines on social distancing and sanitation. “No other activity other than personal exercise, like jogging and walking while maintaining social distancing, will be allowed in the garden,” said Kumar in the order.
State NCP leader and Maharashtra Minister for Excise and Labour Department Dilip Walse-Patil tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday.
“Recently I underwent a Covid-19 test and the results have returned positive. But my health is fine and I am not experiencing any trouble. I urge others who have come in contact with me to get tested as well,” Walse-Patil tweeted on Thursday. Over a dozen ministers in the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government have tested positive for Covid-19 so far.
Next time if you are caught without a face mask in public in Mumbai, get ready to sweep roads as part of community service if you fail to pay fine to the city civic body. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is making violators do community service in the form of sweeping roads if they are reluctant to pay Rs 200 as fine for not wearing masks in public places, according to civic officials.
In view of the coronavirus pandemic, authorities have made wearing of face masks mandatory in public to curb the spread of the infection.
The K-West civic ward, which includes areas like Andheri West, Juhu and Varsova, has already made several violators sweep roads for an hour to deter people from roaming around without a mask. Vishwas Mote, assistant municipal commissioner (K-West ward), told PTI on Thursday that since the past seven days they have made people do community service in the form of sweeping roads if they unnecessarily argue with officials or refuse to pay fine for not wearing a mask.
"Until today, a total of 35 people were made to do community service in the K-West ward," Mote said. According to the officials, this punishment is being handed out as per the BMCs Solid Waste Management Bye-Laws that give the civic body powers to ask citizens to do various community services for spitting on roads.
The Maharashtra government on Thursday announced that it has has extended the lockdown in the state till 30 November. The activities already allowed and permitted from time to time shall be continued and all earlier orders shall be aligned with this order and shall remain in force up to end of November, the state government stated in its fresh order.
The Maharashtra government has directed the Government Railway Police (GRP) to impose fine on commuters found without masks in local trains and on stations, PTI reported. In a letter to GRP Commissioner Ravindra Sengaonkar, state disaster management department director Abhay Yawalkar has said the fine will be in tune with the circular issued by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) on September 9, or any further circular issued by the civic body. The MCGM, at present, imposes a fine of Rs 200 on people found without masks in public places. "The state bequeaths powers to the Government Railway Police to impose fines on commuters found to be travelling without masks in the local trains or inside the station premises," Yawalkar said in the letter.
MNS chief Raj Thackeray on Thursday met Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari at Raj Bhavan in Mumbai, and sought the latter’s intervention on the issue of inflated power bills received by people. According to a Raj Bhavan statement, Thackeray met Koshyari along with a delegation of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). The delegation sought the intervention of the governor on the issue of inflated power bills received by citizens and presented a memorandum to the governor,” the statement said. Click here to read more.
A phone call from their alma mater, at a time when the country is facing an acute shortage of ventilators for Covid-19 patients, drew Harshit Rathore and Nikhil Kurele into manufacturing ventilators. Rathore and Kurele are alumni of IIT-Kanpur, where their company, Nocca Robotics, was incubated in 2017. “It was a phone call from our professor Amitabha Bandopadhyay in March that turned things around and we ventured into making medical devices, first with a simple ventilator and more recently, a High Flow Oxygen Therapy Device,” said Rathore, co-founder of the Pune-based company, which is among five Indian companies to have bagged support from the Centre for Augmenting WAR with Covid-19 Heath Crisis (CAWACH) programme. Click here to read more.
Covid-19 patients, prescribed convalescent plasma therapy, have been facing difficulties in plasma procurement as blood banks in Mumbai have been insisting on replacement donors or extra deposits in cases where a replacement donor is not available immediately. On Tuesday, the state government issued a circular to all blood banks directing them to refrain from making replacement donor mandatory. It also asked blood banks not to charge beyond Rs 5,500 for a single unit of plasma. Though treatment of coronavirus patients through convalescent plasma therapy has dipped following questions over its efficacy, a few doctors have continued to prescribe it. Get latest updates here.
Four people in Navi Mumbai were arrested after they allegedly ransacked the Covid ICU ward in the Vashi municipal hospital early on Wednesday, following the death of their relative. The municipal commissioner has approached police to provide security at the hospital. The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation will also beef up municipal security outside ICUs. “Nobody from among the staff was injured. But our property was damaged. We are yet to assess the extent of the damage,” said Municipal Commissioner Abhijeet Bangar. “It is understandable that the family had complaints about the treatment. But damaging hospital property is uncalled for. We have CCTV footage as evidence,” he added. Click here to read more.
With 6,738 cases in a single day, the Covid-19 tally in Maharashtra rose to 1,660,766 on Wednesday, a state health department official said. With 91 more people succumbing to the infection, the number of fatalities also increased to 43,554. Follow this space for all the latest updates.