Just 7,000 Covid cases in Maharashtra in a day, deaths too fall to 165

MUMBAI: After almost two months of registering a fivedigit daily tally of coronavirus cases, Maharashtra on Monday recorded 7,089 Covid-19 cases. The daily toll, too, fell to 165 after a fortnight of reporting 350 to 400 deaths every day.
The number of Covid cases in Mumbai, too, dropped to 1,620 on Monday. The daily toll in the financial capital was 36. The total tally so far in Maharashtra and Mumbai is 15.35 lakh and 2.3 lakh cases respectively. The death toll in Maharashtra and Mumbai is 40,514 and 9,469 respectively.

State public health minister Rajesh Tope said the number of Covid patients have dropped from five digits to four after a while. “Today, 7,000 new patients have been registered, but twice as many have been cured. While 7,089 patients were diagnosed on Monday, there were 15,656 patients who got cured.” The state’s recovery rate is 83.49% -- closer to the national recovery rate of 86.36%. Tope added that the number of active patients in the state too had dropped to 2,12,439.
State and BMC officials, however, said the “lower” tallies on Monday are most likely the result of fewer staff available to update the files. But experts said the downward trend in both the state and city was apparent. Dr Subhash Salunke, technical advisor to the state government, said, “Pune is certainly showing a decline and Mumbai appears to be stabilising. But these trends should hold for a few more weeks for the trend to be certain.”
ICU in-charge at Nair Hospital Dr Rakesh Bhadade said there was certainly a decline in critical cases. “Compared to the months of May and June, we understand the disease much better and that has helped us to curb deaths. But overall, there is a fall in critical cases,” he said.
Civic chief IS Chahal said active cases in the city have declined from 26,632 on September 11 to 22,369 on October 11. He said civic authorities would be launching a special campaign against people who are not wearing masks. Of the 22,693 active cases on Monday, over 13,000 were asymptomatic, authorities said. While nearly 8,000 were symptomatic, around 1,400 were critical. Of the 36 Covid victims counted in the city on Monday, 30 had comorbidites and 28 were over 60 years of age.
Kalyan-Dombivli reported 229 fresh cases and four deaths, taking the tally to 46,416 and deaths to 908. In Thane city, 307 new cases were registered, taking the tally to 41,168. Six fatalities were reported there on Monday, taking the virus toll to 1,072. The recovery rate in Thane city reached 88.6%.
In Navi Mumbai, 294 cases were reported from NMMC, which also saw six deaths.