Pune has the highest number of Covid cases in the country at present.Maharashtra, Mumbai, Pune Coronavirus News Live Updates: 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.
Mumbai Mayor Kishori Pednekar tested positive for the novel coronavirus infection on Thursday. “I tested positive for covid antigen. It was positive. There are no symptoms. I am isolating myself at home on the advice of a doctor. With your good wishes and blessings, I will soon start serving Mumbaikars,” she wrote in a tweet.
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.
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.