MUMBAI: Daily detections in Covid-19 cases saw a dip on Thursday again after a jump of nearly 1,000 cases a day earlier. On Thursday, 3,880 new cases were reported in Maharashtra, taking overall tally to 18,84,773. The state has reported an average of 4,300 cases in December.
Deaths too declined with 65 lives lost on Thursday, down from 95 on Wednesday. The state's Covid toll has reached 48,499, while case fatality rate remained at 2.57%. State officials said of the 65 deaths, 45 had occurred in the last 48 hours and 10 in the last week. The remaining ten were unregistered ones from previous weeks.
For the 13th day in a row, daily positive cases remained under 800 in Mumbai. On Thursday, the city recorded 586 cases, down from 795 on Wednesday. City's overall case load reached 2,84,990. From a dozen deaths on Wednesday, it dropped to ten, pushing the Covid toll to 11,013. A civic official said all ten had co-morbidities, while five were above the age of 60 years. There has been an average 12 Covid deaths in the city in December, compared to 20 in the first 17 days of November.
Active cases for the city saw a slight rise after a drop of 7,100 cases on Wednesday due to data reconciliation. The city currently has 7,024 active cases, while Maharashtra has a little over 60,000 active cases, its lowest in seven months. As per BMC statistics, only 4,426 of the city's 16,574 Covid beds are currently occupied.
Rajesh Tope, minister for public health, said the state government was ready for the vaccination programme. "The vaccination programme is expected to start from January 2021 provided all clearances come in," he added. Tope said the state has done micro planning for Covid-19 vaccination. He, however, said people should not drop their guard even if the possibility of getting a vaccine is drawing closer.
Vaccine training for almost 18,000 employees will be completed soon and cold storage arrangements have been done, Tope added. He said the state wishes that the Centre provide vaccines for free. "However, the state will not pass on the responsibility," he said.
Meanwhile, Mumbai circle once again saw the highest cases and deaths compared to other administrative divisions. There were 1,067 cases and 20 deaths, while Pune circle had 962 cases and 12 deaths.
In MMR, Thane city had 97 new positive cases reported on Thursday that took the tally of infected people to 53,820 while two Covid deaths took the virus toll to 1,219. The recovery rate in Thane was at 95.98%.