Kolhapur only district in state to register rise in weekly Covid positivity rate

A health workers takes a sample for Covid-19 testing in Pune.

Though most of the districts in the state continue to witness slowdown in Covid-19 cases, Kolhapur in western Maharashtra has emerged as the only district in the state that has witnessed an increase in the infection’s weekly positivity rate.

At present, Kolhapur has the highest occupancy of 67.41 percent of oxygen beds compared to that in any other districts in the state. After defining different levels of Covid-19 restrictions for districts on June 4, the state government on Friday declared the district wise situation for 35 districts.

The details include information about the positivity rate and oxygen bed occupancy as on Thursday so that the district disaster management authority could decide which level of restrictions should be imposed in their respective administrative units for the coming week.

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The details added that any change in the restrictions related to activities in any district should be with concurrence of the state disaster management authority. If the basic level does not change and there is no change in restrictions, then no need to take revised permission, but if there are changes in levels or restrictions are to be modified, then prior permission has to be taken.

As per the weekly positivity rate declared for each district for June 4-10, the highest -15.85 percent – was recorded in Kolhapur district, followed by 14.12 percent in Ratnagiri district. Of total 35 districts, only one has a weekly positivity rate above 15 percent, seven districts each in the range of 10-15 percent and 5-10 percent, while 20 districts have a positivity rate between 0-5 percent.

Kolhapur had a positivity rate of 15.25 percent in the previous week. In the previous week, the highest positivity rate of 19.32 percent was registered in Raigad district. It has now dropped to 13.33 percent.

Four districts each had a positivity rate above 15 percent and 10-15 percent respectively, in the previous week, while 15 had a positivity rate between 5-10 percent and 12 districts in the 0-5 percent range.

Considering the occupancy of oxygen beds for the week June 4-10, the highest of 67.41 percent of total 3,839 are occupied in Kolhapur district, followed by 51.59 percent of total 721 in Sindhudurg district, 48.75 percent of total 1,280 in Ratnagiri district and 41.06 percent of total 4,242 in Satara district.

The maximum number of 14,434 newly infected Covid-19 patients were found in Pune district from the testing of 1,29,962 suspected patients. Total 12,529 of the 2,11,724 people tested in Thane were found Covid-positive and 11,878 of 2,69,659 tested in Mumbai were detected with the virus.

The maximum numbers of 3,416 of total 12,593 oxygen beds are occupied in Mumbai, followed by 2,588 of total 3,839 in Kolhapur district and 2,477 of total 19,051 in Pune district.