Maharashtra Covid lockdown news live: State reports 28,438 new Covid-19 cases, 679 deaths

Sixteen patients suffering from Mucormycosis, a rare but serious infection, have lost their lives during treatment in Maharashtra's Aurangabad city between April 1 and May 10, a senior municipal official said on Tuesday.

Maharashtra cannot afford to rely on others for medical oxygen in the present Covid-19 situation and priority must be given to produce 3,000 metric tons of the vital gas per day in the state itself, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray said on Tuesday. (PTI)

The Covid-19 second wave in Vidarbha is receding rapidly as the region reported less than 5,000 cases on Monday (4,795) and more than double recoveries than new cases (10,980).

Data accumulated so far indicates that at least 26 persons have died of mucormycosis, out of almost 600 who have been afflicted by the black fungus in the district from March this year. The health department and district administration are yet to declare the official data regarding mucormycosis in public domain. Read more

A 38-year old man, along with three of his relatives, have been booked by the Beed police for allegedly walking away his wife’s body from the Covid-19 ward of the civil hospital. He, however, brought the body back to the hospital within an hour after police warned him.

The civic body has directed railway officials to stop passengers from boarding city-bound trains from other states if they do not carry a negative RTPCR report. Last week, the state government mandated people entering Maharashtra from any state to carry a negative RT-PCR report (not older than 48 hours). The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) authorities told TOI that it was the job of the railways to ensure that passengers not carrying the report are not allowed to board trains. “There are many passengers coming to the Pune station each day without the report. Our team is conducting thermal scans and rapid antigen tests for these people. It’s the job of the railway authorities,” Sanjeev Vavare, the assistant medical officer with the PMC said.

More than 64,000 healthcare (HCWs) and frontline workers (FLWs) in rural Pune are yet to receive their second dose of the Covid-19 vaccines, a report by the zilla parishad (ZP) has said. Read more

The ruling Shiv Sena in Maharashtra on Tuesday claimed that the state has controlled the second wave of Covid-19. The state will now also successfully find a way out of the crisis caused by cyclone Tauktae, an editorial in the Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana said.

A delegation of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders on Monday demanded municipal commissioner Vikram Kumar to speed up the process for global tenders on Covid-19 vaccines. “Even if Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) gets secondary treatment from the state government, the civic body should make sure that vaccines are provided to all the citizens. The process of global tenders for procuring vaccines should be completed as soon as possible,” BJP city unit chief Jagdish Mulik said.

As Maharashtra tides over the oxygen crisis amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Raigad district has emerged as one of the state’s key oxygen manufacturing hubs. The district has increased its oxygen manufacturing capacity by almost 40% in the last one year and is now producing around 650 tonnes of medical oxygen every day. While the district needs only around 30 tonnes of medical oxygen per day, Raigad is helping Mumbai and other cities in MMR and even districts like Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Satara, Beed, Jalna, Kolhapur and districts in Marathwada region meet their medical oxygen demand. Mumbai needs around 240 tonnes of oxygen a day. Around 180 tonnes is used from oxygen tanks installed at major hospitals. The remaining 60 tonnes is supplied through jumbo and dura cylinders that come from Raigad.

The number of daily Covid-19 cases slipped to more than two-month low of 3,208 in the Pune Metropolitan Region (PMR) on Monday, mostly due to a reduction in sample testing. The PMR had recorded 2,182 cases on March 15 and since then daily cases have stayed above the Monday’s tally. Read more

The Pune Municipal Corporation and its Pimpri Chinchwad conterpart will be suspending their Covid-19 inoculation drive for the second consecutive day on Tuesday due to a shortage of vaccines. Read more

The state and the city marked significant drops in daily Covid case detections as well as fatalities on Monday, but, as is usual on Sundays, testing was much thinner. Read more

Some shopkeepers' and business outfits on Monday held a protest in Latur in Maharashtra demanding that the state government allow them to open their establishments as the shutdown due to the Covid-19 outbreak had brought about heavy losses.