Maharashtra on Thursday reported 14,718 fresh cases of coronavirus infection, taking the case tally in the state to 7,33,568, said a health official. With 355 fatalities being recorded, the death toll reached 23,444, he said. The number of active cases in the state is 1,78,234. On Thursday, 9,136 people were discharged from hospitals, taking the number of recovered coronavirus patients in the state to 5,31,563, the official said. State capital Mumbai reported 1,350 new cases and 30 deaths. The total number of COVID-19 cases in the city thus rose to 1,40,888 and death toll to 7,535. The number of active cases in Mumbai is 19,463. (PTI)

Doctors treating coronavirus infection have cautioned that parents and pediatricians should be vigilant about a rare hyperinflammatory syndrome as a post Covid-19 complication in children, as early recognition and treatment of the condition can save lives. A seven-year old boy, who was diagnosed with the hyperinflammatory syndrome, was admitted to the paediatric intensive care unit with complaints of fever, pain in abdomen and vomiting. The boy is the son of a Pune Municipal Corporation employee. His family members had tested positive for Covid-19 in July, after which they recovered. “The child had persistent symptoms and we suspected diseases like dengue and septic shock that have similar features,” Dr Jitendra Oswal, deputy medical director of Bharati Hospital, told The Indian Express. Read more

The Bombay High Court directed the Maharashtra government to grant a hearing on Thursday evening to a local Shia Muslim organisation seeking permission to organise a symbolic mourning procession in the city during Muharram. The petitioner, All India Idaara-E-Tahafuz-E- Hussainiyat, approached the high court after the Maharashtra government issued two resolutions earlier this month, prohibiting mourning processions and asking everyone to observe Muharram at home this year in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The petitioner has sought permission for the prayer meet or symbolic procession between August 27 and August 30 this year.The organisation argued that if the state permitted Ganesh idols immersion with certain health safeguards, it must also permit the Muharram mourning procession. (PTI)

The number of COVID-19 cases in Thane rose to 1,17,739 on Thursday after 1,326 more people tested positive for the disease in the Maharashtra district, officials said. The district also reported 38 deaths on Wednesday, taking the total number of fatalities to 3,386, they said. Thane city is close to the 25,000-mark as it has so far reported 24,906 COVID-19 cases, an official here said. Kalyan town in the district has so far reported the highest number of 27,412 cases, accounting for 23 per cent of the total cases in the district, he said. The Thane city and Navi Mumbai township each account for 21 per cent of the total cases in the district. (PTI)

A 48-year-old doctor, who was inspired by immunology pioneers Louis Pasteur and Edward Jenner, said Thursday his vital signs are normal and he has resumed routine work, a day after becoming one of the first voluneteers to be inoculated with Oxford COVID-19 vaccine candidate in phase II trials. The man, who was administered the vaccine candidate dose on Wednesday, said his 21-year-old daughter had also volunteered during the trial of a vaccine on cervical cancer in 2014. "As I work in healthcare sector, I know vaccines have made a huge difference in the quality of human life. When I read the history of vaccination, I got inspired by pioneers Louis Pasteur and Edward Jenner who performed the trials on themselves. They inspired me to volunteer," he told PTI.

The number of new infections of novel Coronavirus jumped to more than 75,000 on Wednesday, the highest that any country has ever recorded on a single day since the start of the outbreak. This was powered by the highest single-day rise in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Here are the top ten states with maximum caseload:

Prisoners at the Aurangabad Central Jail have made 2,000 sarees since June, which will be sold after Covid-19 is brought under control in the state. The project has provided employment to 25 prisoners. "Twenty five prisoners are working on this project and each of them is earning Rs 55 per day. We now have a stock of 2,000 sarees. Earlier, the prisoners used to make shirts, pants and masks. Now, they are making cotton sarees... The sarees are currently not for sale. Once the COVID-19 situation comes under control, we will start selling them," an official told news agency PTI.

The Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) has sealed three private hospitals that were allegedly functioning without a NOC from the fire department and biomedical waste management system. Sai Seva Health Centre, Janseva Hospital, and Matoshri Arogya Kendra were the hospitals sealed. "In April 2019, an order was passed by the Bombay High Court to shut down hospitals without fire NOC and waste management system. Following HC directions, we audited many private hospitals in Thane. The audit is still on. These hospitals are illegally constructed and, hence do not have these requirements,” said Deputy Municipal Commissioner Sandeep Malvi. Read more here

A 45-year-old stockbroker in Mumbai allegedly strangled his wife to death and died by suicide at their Kandivali residence on Tuesday night. Police said the man, Jignesh Doshi, did not have much work due to the lockdown and was upset about his financial condition. In a note recovered by the police, Doshi said no one should be held responsible for the suicide. He also apologised to his 17-year-old son, Parth, for not leaving behind anything for him, police said. Read Mohamed Thaver's report

After recording fewer than 1,000 Covid-19 cases for three days, Mumbai on Wednesday reported a jump of 1,854 fresh cases taking city’s total count to 1.39 lakh cases. Officials said a technical error in the ICMR portal, to which all laboratories report cases, led to the fluctuation in numbers in the last two days. Due to ongoing Ganesh Utsav festivities, Mumbai has witnessed a slight dip in testing, leading to fewer positive cases. Read more here

Maharashtra on Wednesday reported a single-day highest spike of 14,888 coronavirus cases which took the case count to 7,18,711, a health official said. The previous highest increase in the cases was 14,492, recorded on August 21.

In a worrying trend, coronavirus infections are steadily moving towards rural areas of Maharashtra, reflected in rise in number of fresh cases as well as deaths from these regions, said a senior health department official on Wednesday. In initial months of the pandemic, most COVID-19 cases were being reported from big cities, large urban and semi-urban centres, but this is slowly changing now.

At the end of the fifth month of lockdown in the state, rural areas have reported a rise in number of fresh COVID-19 cases as well as deaths, the official said. So far (till August 25), 7,03,823 cases of COVID-19 have been recorded in Maharashtra, of which 5,07,022 (72.03 per cent) were from municipal corporation areas, he said.

Similarly, out of 22,794 deaths reported so far in the state, 17,423 (76.43 per cent) have taken place in municipal corporation areas and 5,371 in rural areas. But now the picture is changing, the official said. With a sizeable number of people travelling to rural areas, the infection has spread there as well followed by more deaths, the official said. For instance, on August 1, there were 4,22,118 cases of COVID-19 in Maharashtra of which 3,36,740 (79.77 per cent) were from municipal corporation areas.

'Similarly, there were a total of 14,994 deaths in the state (as on August 1) of which 12,543 (83.65 per cent) were from urban areas and 2,451from rural areas, he said. Numbers show rising rural contribution in fresh COVID-19 cases as well as deaths.

Delay in testing and admission of critical patients has led to an increase in the COVID-19 death toll in Maharashtra's Palghar district, collector Dr Kailash Shinde said on Wednesday. In an official statement, the collector said that 60 per cent of COVID-19 deaths were of patients who succumbed to the infection within 72 hours of being admitted to hospitals.

This indicates that majority of COVID-19 suspects don't come forward for testing at the right time and are admitted to hospitals in a critical condition at the eleventh hour, he said. In order to ramp up testing in the district, screening camps will be set up in villages or wards where there are more than five active patients, 500 RT-PCRs and over 200 antigen tests will be done every day, Dr Shinde said.

The Dahanu MRHRU lab will be able to conduct 200 free tests from next week, he added. As on Tuesday, the COVID-19 tally in Palghar stood at 22,745, while the death toll was at 456.

With the addition of 788 positive cases of coronavirus, the infection count in Maharashtra's Thane district has gone up to 1,16,413, an official said on Wednesday. These new cases were reported on Tuesday, the official from the district collectorate said.

The fatality count in the district reached 3,348 with the death of 47 patients on Tuesday. Twelve of them were from the rural parts of the district, he said. The recovery rate in the district is now 86.65 per cent, while the mortality rate is 2.88 per cent, the official said.

In neighbouring Palghar district, the number of positive cases reached 22,745, while the death toll mounted to 456 on Tuesday, another official said.

As many as 123 persons tested positive for coronavirus in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district, rising the tally of cases to 21,515 on Wednesday, an official said. According to a release from the district authorities, of the fresh COVID-19 cases, 67 have been reported from the limits of Aurangabad city, while 56 are from rural areas.

The district has recorded 21,515 cases so far, of which 4,430 patients are currently undergoing treatment, the data revealed. At least 287 patients were discharged from various hospitals on Tuesday, taking the number of recoveries to 16,440, the official said. As on Wednesday morning, the death toll in the district stood at 645, he added.

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday directed the state government to provide copies of the latest medical reports of Sudha Bharadwaj, Anand Teltumbde and Vernon Gonsalves, accused in the Elgaar Parishad case, to their families, lawyers and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) before the next hearing on August 28. The court held the accused and their families had a right to know the status of their health and should be given the reports without any delay.

A division bench of Justices R D Dhanuka and V G Bisht was hearing interim bail plea by activist Sudha Bharadwaj, a co-accused in the case, on medical grounds and due to co-morbidities in view of Covid-19 outbreak in prisons. While Bhardwaj is lodged in Mumbai’s Byculla Women’s Jail, Teltumbde and Gonsalves are lodged at Taloja Central Jail in Navi Mumbai.

At this time of the year, in the pre-Covid-19 world, undergraduate medical students, second year onwards, would mill about in hospital wards examining patients, taking their history, and crowding around their lecturers at patients’ bedsides. Postgraduates could be found in operation theatres assisting or observing a surgery. With the focus entirely on coronavirus over the last five months, students fear the loss of an entire year as they grapple with online lectures and zero practical exposure.

Akash Rade, a final-year MBBS student in Seth GS Medical College attached with KEM hospital, is at home in Jalgaon since March. Before the pandemic, MBBS students spent three hours in hospital wards daily to diagnose patients and learn about treatment lines from their lecturers. Those practical sessions have stopped.

“The final year is a formative year for us. Our lecturers are not taking online classes because they are busy so we have asked senior resident doctors to take classes,” Rade said.

Phase-2 trials of the Oxford University vaccine for novel Coronavirus begin in India today, with the first doses being given to a set of six volunteers at Pune’s Bharati Vidyapeeth medical college and hospital. This vaccine, developed in collaboration with AstraZeneca, is considered the most promising to be successful, and is undergoing phase-3 trials in some other countries.

Indian regulatory rules require a vaccine to be tested within India for it to be authorised for use on Indian population. Accordingly, Pune’s Serum Institute of India, which has an agreement with AstraZeneca to produce and market this vaccine in India and many other countries, has initiated human trials. Both phase-2 and phase-3 trials would take place in India. Phase-1, during which the vaccine’s safety is assessed, is not mandatory to be repeated in India.

Auditors appointed by the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporations, to verify the amounts being charged by private hospitals for treating Covid-19, have saved Rs 44 lakh of patients and their families so far, Divisional Commissioner Saurabh Rao said on Tuesday.

After receiving several complaints of private hospitals overcharging Covid patients, the two civic bodies appointed multiple teams of auditors, which have started verifying the bills issued to Covid-19 patients admitted at various private hospitals in the city.

In Pune, the administration had received 102 complaints of overcharging by private hospitals and the auditors, upon checking the bills, found overcharging in 65 of the cases. The cumulative total of the bills checked was Rs 2.15 crore and the auditors found an unfair inflation of Rs 30.94 lakh in these. After adjustments, the cumulative total of the bills shrank to Rs 1.84 crore.