Covid-19: Maharashtra’s 8 lakh+ count beats 5th worst-hit country

MUMBAI: Maharashtra reported its biggest single-day spike of 17,433 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, taking its total to 8,25,739. On Tuesday, the state had added 15,765 fresh cases and 320 deaths, taking its tally to 8,08,306. The state took seven days to go from 7 lakh to 8 lakh cases.
Maharashtra now has more cases than Peru (6,57,129 as on September 1), the fifth most-affected country. The state’s active cases crossed 2 lakh on Wednesday while the toll surpassed 25,000 with the addition of 292 deaths. The state toll of 25,195 accounts for 38% of deaths in India.

Mumbai added 1,622 cases and 34 deaths on Wednesday, taking its count to 1,48,569, inching towards the 1.5 lakh mark, and its toll to 7,727.
After a dip 2 weeks ago, state’s positivity rate is back to 19%
Senior government officials said that after a slight dip in the Covid-19 positivity rate of the state two weeks ago, the positivity rate is back to 19.2%. “This shows the prevalence of the infection and with the addition of a large number of new cases, recovery rate has stagnated to 72.4%,” said a senior official.

Of the 292 Covid-19 deaths added in Maharashtra on Wednesday, 201 were from the last 48 hours, 55 from last week and 36 from the period before that, the state update said.
BMC’s Suresh Kakani said 50,000 antigen kits will soon be deployed to boost testing numbers in Mumbai although RTPCR would remain the frontline test. “The positivity rate with antigen is just about 4%, whereas that with RT-PCR is much higher. So antigen will be used but in measured numbers,” he said.
On Wednesday, Pune circle reported 4,720 cases and 58 deaths, while Mumbai circle reported 4,553 cases and 81 deaths. The total cases in MMR are now 3.4 lakh with 13,007 deaths, while Pune circle has 2.1 lakh cases and 5,314 deaths. Public health minister Rajesh Tope said that there is more focus on the Pune region and that Deputy CM Ajit Pawar was closely monitoring the situation in Pune. “More 29,649, with 648 deaths. Ulhasnagar city reported 24 fresh cases, taking its tally to 7,857, with 230 deaths. Presently in Ulhasnagar, out of 7,857 patients, 7,216 patients have recovered while 411are active. At Bhiwandi, where cases are under control, 33 fresh cases were reported, taking the total to 4,252, with 286 deaths.
beds are being added and aggressive testing being carried out in the district,” said Tope. Besides Pune, districts like Nashik, Nagpur, Jalgaon, Solapur and Kolhapur continued to add cases in big numbers.
From MMR, Kalyan-Dombivli reported 429 fresh cases and 10 deaths, taking its tally to Eighteen cops from Riot Control Police who were on bandobast duty in Vasai region during Ganeshotsav and Muharram tested positive on Tuesday.
The state also reported the highest number of recoveries in a single day. With 13,959 people recovering in a day, total recoveries in the state are now 5.9 lakh.