Pune has the highest number of Covid cases in the country at present.Maharashtra, Mumbai, Pune Coronavirus News Live Updates: Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has said that in view of the WHO’s warning that COVID-19 cases will be on the rise in the coming days, the state government has decided to provide 80 per cent oxygen cylinders to hospitals and 20 per cent to industries. He also said that although there were only a handful of testing laboratories in the state when the outbreak began, their number has now grown to 550.
Maharashtra on Thursday recorded its second-highest spike in coronavirus cases at 23,446, which took the case tally to 9,90,795, a health department official said. On Wednesday, the state had witnessed a record increase of 23,816 COVID-19 patients. The death toll on Thursday increased to 28,282 with 448 fresh fatalities. The state has 2,61,432 active patients, 69,456 of them in Pune district, followed by Thane with 28,460 and Mumbai with 26,629 active patients. The death toll due to the pandemic in Mumbai increased by 38 to reach 8,023. Pune reported 4,885 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total count of infections to 2,06,290.
As many as 14,253 patients were discharged during the day, so the number of recovered cases rose to 7,00,715. The recovery rate in the state is 70.72 per cent. So far over 49.74 lakh tests have been conducted in the state.
Serum Institute of India has decided to halt ongoing clinical trials in India of the Covid-19 candidate developed by The University of Oxford until AstraZeneca restarts its own global trials of the vaccine. The development comes a day after the Pune-headquartered firm announced that the Swedish-British drug giant’s decision to pause the ongoing trials while it reviewed a potential safety concern would not impact the testing underway in India.
A worker sanitises PMPML buses in Pune.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has said that in view of the WHO's warning that COVID-19 cases will be on the rise in the coming days, the state government has decided to provide 80 per cent oxygen cylinders to hospitals and 20 per cent to industries. He also said that although there were only a handful of testing laboratories in the state when the outbreak began, their number has now grown to 550. Thackeray said this while inaugurating a testing laboratory and six COVID Care centres in Navi Mumbai on Thursday.
"Considering the warning given by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that the number of COVID-19 cases will rise in the coming days, the state government has decided to provide 80 per cent oxygen cylinders to hospitals and the remaining 20 per cent to industries," an official release quoted him as saying. "This distribution of oxygen cylinders will be done through a centralised system," he said.
Police have arrested a man and launched a search for at least nine others for allegedly manhandling a few doctors at a private hospital in Murbad town of Maharashtra's Thane district over a COVID-19 patient's treatment, an official said on Friday. The incident took place late on Thursday night, he said.
"There was some misunderstanding between a coronavirus positive patient undergoing treatment at the private COVID-19 hospital in Murbad and the doctors over administering saline. The patient informed his relatives and others about it. Soon around 10 persons came to the facility," inspector Dattatreya Borate of Murbad police station said. "These people started abusing the hospital staff and manhandled a few doctors. The drama unfolded around 11.30 pm and continued for some time," he said.
With yet another surge of over 95,000 cases in 24 days, the Covid-19 tally in India went pass the 4.5 million mark while the number of fatalities stood at 76,271 on Friday, as per latest data released by the Ministry of Health Affairs. As many as 70,000 recoveries were also registered within the same time period.
While an independent group of experts began investigating the severe illness in a participant that led to a halt on clinical trials of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine, the World Health Organisation said there was nothing to be discouraged about, since these kinds of incidents routinely happen during trials.
Meanwhile, the India trials of the vaccine, being carried out by Pune-based Serum Institute of India, have also been halted. Serum had, on Wednesday, claimed that the India trials would remain unaffected by AstraZeneca’s decision. However, it was issued a show-cause notice by the officer of the Drug Controller General of India, and on Thursday, Serum said it was putting a hold on India trials. Till now, 100 participants have been given the vaccine in India where combined phase-2 and phase-3 trials were approved last month. About 1,600 participants were planned to be enrolled for the complete trial.
Maharashtra on Thursday recorded its second-highest spike in coronavirus cases at 23,446, which took the case tally to 9,90,795, a health department official said. On Wednesday, the state had witnessed a record increase of 23,816 COVID-19 patients. The death toll on Thursday increased to 28,282 with 448 fresh fatalities.