Maharashtra Covid lockdown news live: Congress to give nearly Rs 2cr for vaccination drive

The Maharashtra Congress on Thursday said it will donate nearly Rs 2 crore to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund (CMRF) to contribute towards the free Covid-19 vaccination drive for people in the age group of 18 to 44. (PTI)

BJP leader and former Maharashtra minister Pankaja Munde on Thursday said she has tested positive for coronavirus and is in isolation.

Three persons have been arrested for allegedly trying to cheat people by selling them saline water in vials of Remdesivir, an anti-viral used in the treatment of Covid-19, in Maharashtra's Beed city, police said on Thursday. The Shivaji Nagar police recently nabbed Santhosh Naikwade, Prakash Nagargoje and Datta Nirmal for allegedly trying to sell a vial of the injection for Rs 22,000, an official said.

Maharashtra's daily Covid-19 vaccination figure has dropped by 1.5 lakh amid the current shortage of vaccine doses, an official said on Thursday. The state's overall inoculation count currently stands at over 1.55 crore, he said. As per the data released on Thursday, the state had inoculated 3,88,247 persons on Tuesday, while it could administer 2,37,700 vaccine doses on Wednesday. (PTI)

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has asked the Centre to declare the Covid-19 pandemic as a "national calamity", Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut said on Thursday. Talking to reporters here,Raut also said the "Maharashtra model" of Covid-19 management should be implemented in other parts of the country.

The district received 2,366 vials of remdesivir on Wednesday. The low allocation was due to the poor supply of the vials from manufacturers, officials said. The district had received 10,000 vials collectively on Monday and Tuesday.“We could supply 2,366 vials to 155 Covid hospitals on Wednesday. The allocation is likely to improve in the next two days,” said Shyam Pratapwar, assistant commissioner, FDA, Pune.

The growing oxygen deficit has reached a stage where doctors running small Covid hospitals have been compelled to adopt a “beg or borrow” strategy to run the daily show.“SOS messages on various WhatsApp groups of doctors in the Pune Metropolitan Region (PMR) begging for oxygen cylinders have become a routine. Healthcare workers are dispensing services under fear of being attacked and getting roughed up,” said Sanjay Patil, chairman of the Indian Medical Association's Hospital Board of India, an association of small and medium-size hospitals in Pune.

While Covid-19 cases appear to have stabilised in Maharashtra, fatalities continue to rise alarmingly. On Wednesday, 985 deaths were reported—the highest addition so far. The cumulative death figures showed a higher 1,035, though, as the state added 50 additional deaths to the tally over and above the toll reported on Wednesday. With this, the total death tally in the state stood at 67,214, up from 66,179 on Tuesday.

An 85-year-old Covid-19 patient with dipping oxygen levels died at home after getting himself discharged from hospital against medical advice because he ostensibly didn't want to block a bed after seeing the wife of a 40-year-old patient pleading for admission. Narayan Dabhalkar, a retired state government employee, had been taken to a civic hospital on April 22 and was temporarily kept in the casualty ward when he noticed the woman beseeching doctors to give her husband a bed, his family said.

Two days after the NCP announced the state government’s decision to vaccinate everyone in the 18-44 age group free of cost at civic and government centres, the MVA government made it official on Wednesday. The cabinet approved an allocation of Rs 6,500 crore to inoculate a population of 5.7 crore in the 18-44 age group.

The state cabinet on Wednesday unanimously decided to extend the lockdownlike restrictions in Maharashtra for another fortnight, that is, from May 1 to 15, after the current fortnight of curbs ends at the end of this month. The decision came on a day the state recorded 985 Covid deaths, its highest daily toll since the start of the pandemic.

Private hospitals in the Pune civic limits are in a fix over holding their regular vaccination sessions after Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) officials on Wednesday told them to source the doses directly from vaccine makers. This may force the private hospitals to halt the vaccination sessions for the next two months, starting May 1. PMC officials, however, said vaccination sessions would continue at government/municipal corporation hospitals according to availability of doses.