Pune district reported a spike of 68 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, taking its cumulative tally of active cases to 1,464, health officials said.
“As many as 62 new cases were reported between 9 p.m. on Saturday and midnight, while another six have been reported till today morning,” district health officer Bhagwan Pawar said.
Till date, Pune district has reported a total 1,980 cases of the virus, which includes 1,464 active cases (mostly from Pune city), 103 deaths and 413 discharged patients.
As per figures given by the Pune zilla parishad health department till Saturday evening, 1,396 active cases were recorded which included 1,321 cases in Pune city, 59 in Pimpri-Chinchwad, and 16 in Pune rural areas.
Of these 1,396 cases, 1,117 are presently undergoing treatment in Pune Municipal Corporation–run hospitals, 155 in Sassoon and BJ Medical College Hospitals, 49 in civil hospitals, 16 in rural hospitals and 59 in Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation-run hospitals.
Seventy-one of the patients are said to be in a critical condition.
Dr. Pawar said till yesterday, the samples of a total 16,254 persons had been tested in Pune district of whom 13,933 samples had returned negative.
The district has witnessed a surge of nearly 300 new cases in the past 72 hours.
The death toll in Pune division — which includes the districts of Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur and Solapur along with Pune — now stands at 113, with Solapur reporting six deaths, Satara district recording two, and Kolhapur and Sangli each reporting one death so far, Pune Divisional Commissioner Deepak Mhaisekar said.
As on Sunday afternoon, the total number of COVID-19 patients in Pune division had exceeded 2,200, of which more than 1,600 were active cases.
Solapur district recorded an alarming spike of 14 new cases, including the son of a corporator and two of his close kin, said officials. This takes the number of cases in the district to 128.
“Of these 128, there have been six fatalities while 19 persons have recovered and have been discharged. So, at the moment, there are 103 active positive cases in Solapur while the test results of another 117 persons are awaited,” a district administration official said.
Aurangabad crosses 280
Meanwhile, at least 25 new cases of the virus were reported from Aurangabad district in Marathwada, taking the total number of cases to 281. Of these, 247 were active positive cases, health officials in the district said.
More than 20 of these cases were reported from Mukundwadi, sources at the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) said. The district had recorded its first positive case on March 15. While the number of cases increased over the next 45 days, the contagion seemed to be in check as the tally was a little over 50.
“However, in the last week or so, the district has witnessed an alarming surge of over 220 cases, with a daily spike of an average 25,” an official from GCMH said.