Mumbai, (Samajweekly) Spelling some relief after four days, Maharashtra new coronavirus cases dropped below the 5K mark to 4,878 on Tuesday, but the death toll jumped to its third highest in a fortnight, while the number of patients in Pune division crossed the 25K mark, health officials said.
The number of fatalities in the state shot up from the June-lowest of 62 to 245 on Tuesday, down from the previous highest daily death toll of 248 notched on June 23.
However, on June 16, the state had reported the highest 1,409 fatalities, taking into account the reconciliation of earlier deaths, which drastically escalated the toll.
With Tuesday’s 245 fatalities, the state’s death toll climbed from Monday’s 7,610 to 7,855 and total cases zoomed to 174,761 till date, both the highest in the country.
This comes to roughly one death recorded every 6 minutes and a staggering 203 new cases notched every hour in the state on Tuesday.
The recovery rate marginally fell from 52.59 per cent to 52.02 per cent, while the mortality (death) rate stood at 4.49 per cent.
For most days in June, the state has been recording deaths in three digits and since the past four days 5K plus figures of new patients daily, causing major concerns among the health officials.
The Health Department said of the total number of cases declared till date, 75,979 are ‘active cases’ and that this number is lower (favourable) vis-a-vis the number of patients cured, indicating a positive sign.
Of the total 245 fatalities declared on Tuesday, Mumbai alone notched 93 deaths – pulling up the city death toll to 4,556 now, while the number of positive patients here shot up by 893 cases to 77,658.
Besides Mumbai’s 93 deaths, 85 casualties were reported in Thane, 17 in Aurangabad, 12 in Pune, 8 in Solapur, 7 each in Palghar and Raigad, 6 in Jalgaon, 4 in Nashik, 3 in Akola, besides 1 each in Kolhapur, Ratnagiri and Latur.
On the positive side, a total of 1,951 fully cured patients returned home on Tuesday, taking the number of those discharged to 90,911 now – considerably higher than the 75,979 ‘active cases’ currently.
The MMR (Thane Division) continues to be tricky as deaths and cases shoot up, with a total of 5,722 Covid-19 fatalities and a whopping 3,075 new patients pushing up the number of positive cases to 125,400 on Tuesday.
Thane – with 37,630 cases and 956 fatalities – has emerged as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state.
Pune district comes third with 22,327 patients and 752 deaths till now. But Pune Division ranks second (after MMR) with 26,054 patients and fatalities reaching 4-digit levels since Sunday to touch 1,060 on Tuesday.
The next major region of concern is Nashik division with 531 fatalities and 9,341 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad division with 275 deaths and 6,249 cases, and finally Akola division with 129 fatalities and 2,374 cases.
Kolhapur division has notched 53 deaths and 2,036 patients, Latur division had 44 fatalities and 1008 cases, and finally Nagpur division recorded 18 deaths and 1,850 cases.
Only Nagpur division recorded zero fatalities on Tuesday, though there were new Covid-19 positive cases, while Latur division gained entry to the a4-digit club’ of patients, like all other divisions in the state.
Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home-quarantine increased from Sunday’s 574,093 to 578,033 now, while those in institutional quarantine increased from 37,758 to 38,866 on Tuesday.
