Maharashtra Covid lockdown news live: Nagpur reports 1,377 coronavirus cases, 36 deaths

Two ward boys of a civic hospital designated for Covid-19 treatment in Thane city of Maharashtra, have been arrested for allegedly issuing fake negative reports, police said on Wednesday.

Even though the spurt of coronavirus in rural belt of the district has been a cause of great concern for the administration, the silver lining is as many as 270 out of total 1,687 villages, 16%, do not have a single Covid patient. At divisional commissioner Piyush Singh's review meeting held on Tuesday, collector Shailesh Naval said there are 778 villages which have active Covid cases, while 639 villages have fewer patients.

State health minister Rajesh Tope is considering the deployment of rapid antigen test (RAT) surveillance to improve testing in the rural areas of the state. The potential move comes in the backdrop of the limitations in rural areas, with inadequate infrastructure to carry out RT-PCR tests. Tope said door-to-door surveillance would also be carried out.

Vidarbha’s fresh Covid-19 case count was under 5,000 for the first time in 62 days on May 17. This is no doubt a good news for the region. Better news is Covid curve is in exponential decay and is falling more rapidly than it rose. Keeping Covid appropriate behaviour going can end the wave in the region by this month-end, said experts. The exponential growth phase of the second wave began in the first week of March in Vidarbha, which was earliest in India. Ascent from less than 5,000 cases to a peak of 17,019 cases took 41 days from March 11 to April 24. On the other hand, descent from the peak to less than 5,000 cases has taken only 23 days from April 24 to May 17. The has dissipated in about half the time it took to rise. It’s still plummeting rapidly.

Encouraged by successful production of oxygen by making slight alteration to the ethanol manufacturing unit in Osmanabad, a total of 20 distilleries from different parts of Maharashtra have expressed their interest in setting up oxygen generation plants on similar lines. Impressed by the idea, the Uttar Pradesh government is also implementing the Osmanabad pattern at 15 ethanol plants for increasing the oxygen generation capacity ahead of third wave of Covid-19.

To help people combat the emotional impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, NGO Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) has set up a psychosocial telesupport service in 10 Indian languages for the next three months. “It is voluntary work that will be free for people who want to talk about their problems apart from medical ones arising due to Covid,” said TISS professor Srilata Juvva who is a part of the initiative.

Vaccination has begun to decline in the district. It is likely to affect the city on Wednesday due to shortage. Nearly 7,439 healthcare workers (HCWs), frontline workers (FLWs) as well as the 45-plus class took the first and second dose in the district on Tuesday. In all, 4,021 took the jab in the city and 3,418 in rural parts of the district despite availability of Covishield and Covaxin doses. Vaccination was badly affected in the city in nine out of the of 12 days until May 12 due to lack of doses. Inoculation resumed on May 13 after doses were supplied.

With the addition of 1,360 new cases of coronavirus, the infection count in Thane district of Maharashtra has gone up to 5,02,107, an official said on Wednesday. These new cases were reported on Tuesday, he said. The virus also claimed the lives of 57 more people, pushing the death toll in the district to 8,533 he said. The Covid-19 mortality rate in Thane stood at 1.69 per cent, he added. Details of recovered and under-treatment patients were not provided by the district administration. (PTI)

Many recovered patients, bereaved family members and friends are now seeking psychological help to overcome fear psychosis instilled by the Covid second wave. Psychatirists say many patients are coming with the fear of not being fully out of Covid, even though they have recovered. Another group included many young women who have lost their husbands or childhood friends.

The sharp dip in the number of new Covid-19 cases continued in Vidarbha on Tuesday too. The region reported 5,799 new cases, 10,293 recoveries and 163 deaths in the last 24 hours. The number of daily Covid-19 tests which had reached below 40,000 on Sunday recovered to the average daily count of 55,000 tests in the next 24 hours. Despite increased testing, the number of new Covid-19 cases continued to be low, which is a strong indicator that the curve is now moving towards the baseline.

The Covid-19 recovery rate in the Pune municipal limits has increased to 95%, almost the same recorded in mid-February when the second wave was just starting to show itself here. In the last one month alone, the recovery rate in the PMC areas has jumped by over 13%, bringing down its active caseload to 16,523 as against 55,900 recorded in mid-April.