New COVID-19 positive cases continued to mount relentlessly across Maharashtra with Pune and Aurangabad districts reporting a combined surge of more than 100 new cases over a 12-hour span on Tuesday.

At least 52 new cases were reported since Monday evening in Pune to take the district’s total tally — including deaths and recoveries — to 4,229, while a surge of 51 new cases in Aurangabad has taken district’s cumulative case tally to 1,073, said authorities. The two districts had reported a near-identical 12-hour- surge on May 14 as well.

“As many as 52 new cases were reported since 9 p.m. Monday till today morning,” said Pune District Health Officer (DHO) Bhagwan Pawar.

Pune had reported five fatalities on Monday to take the district’s death toll to 211, despite the medical bulletin issued by the State Health Department

Of the 4,229 cases in the district, 1,949 were active while 2,069 persons had been discharged thus far.

As per figures given by the Pune Zilla Parishad’s Health Department till Wednesday evening, there were 1,897 active cases still in various hospitals across the district of whom 1,616 are undergoing treatment in hospitals in Pune city, 85 in Pimpri-Chinchwad, and as many as 196 in Pune rural areas.

166 critical

As many as 166 among these were in a critical condition.

Dr. Pawar said that till Monday, a total of 32,824 samples had been tested in Pune district of which 27,012 had returned negative. A total 3,417 persons were at present kept in quarantine facilities in the district.

Along with Pune’s total fatalities, the death toll in Pune division — which includes the districts of Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur and Solapur along with Pune — has risen to 241, with Solapur reporting 26 deaths, Satara district recording two, and Kolhapur and Sangli each had reported one death thus far.

50 new cases in Solapur district

Solapur district has witnessed steadily mounting cases with at least 50 new ones being reported on Monday, taking the district’s total tally to 435.

Authorities said that till now, the samples of 4, 663 persons had been sent for testing of which the results of 4,418 had been received. Of the remaining 245 cases, 26 had died while the sample results of 219 were awaited.

“Of these 4,418 samples, 3,983 have returned negative and the rest 435 positive,” said a district official.

Both Satara and Kolhapur, which had seemingly reined in the contagion during the better part of the lockdown period, have seen a rise in cases following relaxation of inter-district travel norms.

Satara recorded eight new cases since Monday evening, taking the tally to 146 of which 73 are active.

Kolhapur reported as many as 11 cases on Monday, taking its total to 58. Authorities said that as many as 34 new cases have been reported in the last five days itself.

Kolhapur District Collector Daulat Desai said that the surge was attributable to the increased inter-district movement, with several people from Mumbai, Pune and other areas who were stranded during the lockdown, swarming back to their homes in Kolhapur and flouting quarantine norms.

On Monday, Maharashtra reported a consecutive second day surge of more 2,000 cases, with 2,033 new ones, taking the State’s cumulative tally to 35,058 cases, while 51 new fatalities saw the death toll rise to 1,249.