Maharashtra Covid lockdown news live updates: Nashik sees 2,925 cases, 18 deaths

Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope said the state was willing to increase the number of vaccination sites if there was a steady supply of doses from the Centre. His comments come a day after Union minister Prakash Javadekar tweeted that vaccine supply to Maharashtra would be scaled up. Javadekar also requested the state to double its vaccination rate.

Eight states and UTs have a weekly positivity rate of coronavirus infection higher than the national average of 5.04 per cent, with Maharashtra recording the highest rate at 22.78 per cent, the Union Health ministry said on Sunday. Apart from Maharashtra, the other seven states and UTs with higher positivity rate than national average are Chandigarh (11.85 per cent positivity rate), Punjab (8.45 per cent), Goa (7.03 per cent), Puducherry (6.85 per cent), Chhattisgarh (6.79 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (6.65 per cent) and Haryana (5.41 per cent).

Senior citizens and comorbid whose second dose will be due from Monday will have to wait for one more day as the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has kept Monday as an offday due to Holi festival. Instead, the vaccination programme will continue on Sunday, which is normally a holiday. The government had rolled out the vaccine for the 60-plus age group and those 45 and above with specified comorbidities on March 1. In all, 607 from the age-appropriate group had taken the jab on the first day in the city. As per the government’s guidelines, they can take the second dose after 28 days. The second dose of these 607 beneficiaries will be due from Monday.

Amid shortage of beds hampering Covid treatment, a massive facility set up nearly six months ago remains unutilized. At the Pachpaoli Covid care centre, Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has set up an 86-bed walk-in oxygen facility, which is yet to be inaugurated. The idea was to administer oxygen to patients with low saturation levels till they could get a hospital bed. The other way round, patients only needing oxygen could also be taken out of the hospital and kept at the centre for rest of the days. This could have led to faster availability of beds.

With the addition of 3,225 new cases of coronavirus, the tally in Maharashtra's Thane district has reached 3,05,784,an official said on Sunday. Besides these new cases reported on Saturday, the virus also claimed the lives of eight more people, pushing the death toll in the district to 6,432, he said. The Covid-19 mortality rate in the district stood at 2.10 per cent, he said. So far, 2,74,098 patients have recuperated from the infection in the district, which reflects a recovery rate of 89.64 per cent. As of now, there are 25,254 active Covid-19 cases in Thane, the official said.

City police will initiate action against people burning Holi and organizing other festivities at public places. City police chief Amitesh Kumar on Saturday said playing with colours will not be tolerated on roads, common areas in apartments or even within ghettoed communities as a part of the Covid curbs. People can celebrate the festival in their home only with their family members while keeping neighbours and others away, as per police.

The present surge in Covid-19 cases is not limited to Vidarbha region now. Cases are now coming from almost every circle of Maharashtra, as a result of which state-wide night curfew decision has been taken. However, a simple comparison with data of daily Covid-19 cases of last six days shows that death rate in Vidarbha, and especially in Nagpur, is significantly higher than other places. Vidarbha region has reported 40,652 new cases and 406 deaths from March 22 to 27, which means the case fatality rate is almost 1%. Mumbai circle has reported 52,844 cases and 134 deaths.

The Nandurbar district administration has announced imposition of lockdown in the entire district from the midnight of March 31 to midnight of April 15. District collector Rajendra Bharud said this measure has been taken following a phenomenal rise of the daily Covid cases in the district. The tribal dominated district of North Maharashtra has become the first district in the region to impose a lockdown following resurgence of the pandemic since late February this year.

With Covid-19 cases surging in the state, the Maharashtra government on Saturday issued details of the new restrictions it was imposing: prohibiting gatherings of more than five people in public places from 8pm to 7am from Saturday midnight across the state and putting public places like gardens, beaches and seafronts out of bounds between 8pm to 7 am. Read more

The daily Covid-19 testing soared to 29,287, highest since the beginning of pandemic last year, in the Pune Metropolitan Region (PMR) on Saturday, taking its total testing above 27.87 lakh. Despite the rise in tests, the daily detections in PMR was 6,563 in the last 24 hours, a day after hitting a new peak of 7,090.

Vaccination slots on CoWIN will be fine-tuned to have hourly and two-hourly slots from the current wider ‘forenoon’ and ‘afternoon’ windows to benefit those booking prior appointments, RS Sharma, who heads the committee overseeing the vaccine delivery system, told TOI on Saturday.

The Pune Municipal Corporation has sought post-fire audit compliance report of all civic and private hospitals in the city against the backdrop of the fire in a Covid health facility in Bhandup, which left nine dead. The fire safety audit of the hospitals were conducted in January after the fire at Bhandara hospital earlier this year. Officials said while most hospitals had met the fire safety norms, they were requiredtosubmitdetailed compliance reports in the next two days. “If any recommended works remain to be done, the hospitals will have to complete them in the next10 days,” a civic official said.