Maharashtra: 3,427 past deaths added to toll in 4 days of June; fatalities to fall in 10 days, says doctor

MUMBAI: In the first four days of June, though the daily Covid caseload as well as deaths dropped significantly, the state has added 3,427 past fatalities due to the ongoing data reconciliation exercise. On Friday, 1,088 ‘old’ deaths were added, bringing the data up to date till May 31.
In all, 1,358 deaths occurred in June so far, and the remaining 2,069 took place more than a week ago, said state health officials. “Many of these deaths are old as many districts are finding it difficult to feed mortality data in real time,” said Dr Avinash Supe, a member of the state government’s task force on Covid mortality.
Supe reassured that the state’s weekly death rate is still around 1% and he expects the number of deaths to drop drastically in the next 10 days. “The number of ICU admissions is dropping, but there are still a significant number of patients who are critical and have been there for weeks. This could explain the ‘thick tail’ that Maharashtra has both in terms of cases and deaths,” said Supe.
The state added 14,152 cases and 289 deaths on Friday, taking the total caseload to 58 lakh and the toll to 98,771, including the 1,088 ‘old’ deaths.
In Mumbai, the daily caseload stayed under 1,000 for the fifth day in a row. While 968 cases were registered in Mumbai on Friday, the total caseload increased to 7.1 lakh since March 2020. The number of deaths in Mumbai dropped, with 24 deaths recorded on Friday. The toll since the pandemic began stands at 14,922 so far.
On Friday, once again, Dharavi reported one Covid case. The total active cases now stand at 20 from the slum cluster. The test positivity rate in Mumbai dropped further to 3.5% with 27,351 tests conducted in a 24-hour period. The overall growth rate of Covid cases in Mumbai between May 28 and June 3 dropped to 0.13% and the doubling rate has increased to 515 days.
Echoing Supe, state government officials said the number of critical patients has dropped significantly across the state and daily deaths will see a drop in the next few days. “There are a few districts like Satara, Kolhapur, Ratnagiri where cases are on the rise and they are being closely monitored and strict containment measures are being put in place,” said an official.