Maharashtra's Covid tally crosses 6 lakh, but only 25% are active cases

MUMBAI: With the addition of 8,493 new Covid-19 cases, lowest in the last 13 days, Maharashtra crossed 6 lakh cases on Monday. The time taken for the state to go from 5 lakh to 6 lakh cases has been only nine days. The total cases in the state stand at 6,04,358, of which 1,55,268 are active cases-25.6%. The state also reported a dip in Covid-19 fatalities on Monday with 228 deaths, lowest in 21 days; it had reported 227 deaths on July 27.
Of the 228 deaths, 172 were from the last 48 hours, 36 from the last week and 20 from the period before that, officials said.

A look at the age-wise distribution of cases shows that at 1.22 lakh, the most infected are those in the 31-40 age-group, who form 21% of cases, followed by 1.03 lakh from the 41-50 age-group, contributing nearly 18% of cases. Officials said this is the age-group largely moving out of the house for work or for groceries. Also, a total of 23,508 children up to 10 years of age have tested positive, which is 4% of total cases.
The city too registered a dip in cases of the total added on Monday -8.8% of cases were from Mumbai. Its 753 cases were lowest in 13 days; on August 4, Mumbai had reported 709. The total cases in the city are now 1,29,479, of which 13.6% or 17,704 are active cases.
While the city may have seen a big dip in daily cases, doubling rate and average growth rate had seen a marginal rise last week. After recording the slowest doubling rate of 89 days and growth rate of 0.79% on August 8, doubling rate dropped to 85 days and growth rate rose to 0.82% on Sunday. On Monday, doubling rate was 86 days and growth rate 0.81%.
D ward, which includes areas like Peddar Road and Malabar Hill, had the fastest doubling rate of 50 days on Sunday, while M East, that includes Chembur (E), had the slowest at 119. D ward also had the highest growth rate of 1.4%, underlining the trend of more infections coming from high-rises. The situation though is much better than two months ago. On June 15, the city had an average doubling rate of 28 days and average growth rate of 2.49%. It improved to 77 days on July 31 and growth rate dropped to less than 1%. AMC Suresh Kakani said the rise was marginal but there was nothing to worry.