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Four staff members of Maharashtra's Home Minister Dilip Walse Patil tested positive for Covid-19. The state's Home Minister's office said that sample testing of people staying at the minister's residence has been done. Additionally, Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Bharati Pawar on Thursday said she has tested positive for coronavirus. Bharati Pawar is the Lok Sabha member from Dindori in the Nashik district of Maharashtra. Hemant Godse, a fellow MP from the district, had tested positive for coronavirus on January 5.
Yesterday, Maharashtra reported a 36%rise in Covid-19 cases in the past day. The state added 36,265 new Covid-19 cases, including 79 cases of the Omicron variant. With these additions, the state's coronavirus tally rose to 67,93,297, while the death toll increased to 1,41,594.
Mumbai alone reported 20,181 Covid cases in the last 24 hours. The slum-dominated and densely populated Dharavi area of Mumbai recorded 107 new coronavirus cases, the highest since the pandemic began in March 2020, civic officials said. The previous record of daily cases in the area was 99, recorded on April 8, 2021, during the second wave of the pandemic.
According to Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope, the hospitalisation rate has not increased significantly in Mumbai, and 80% of hospital beds in the city were still unoccupied. A similar rise in infections had been seen during the second wave too last year, but this time around the demand for medical oxygen and the number of deaths have not increased, which was a positive sign, he added.
The Maharashtra Health Minister said that the new variant of coronavirus primarily affects the upper respiratory tract, including the nose and throat, more, and not so much the lungs. He further ruled out the possibility of a lockdown in the state. Tope said the Maharashtra government has not yet considered shutting down local trains in Mumbai and imposing inter-district travel restrictions due to the lower hospitalisation rate.
On the Covid vaccination drive against coronavirus, the health department said 13,64,60,096 doses have been administered in the state so far. Of this, 3,16,746 doses were administered to children in the age group of 15-17 years.
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