There has been a sudden drop in the number of Covid cases across Maharashtra on Monday, with 37,236 new infections being reported in the last 24 hours, pushing its tally to 51,38,973 cases till now. It is the lowest single-day case reported since March 27 this year. Meanwhile, 549 people succumbed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the last 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 76,398.
Mumbai also witnessed the lowest single-day cases on Monday since March 15. The city reported 1,794 new infections and 74 covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours, increasing the total count to 6,78,269, with 13,891 deaths so far.
Meanwhile, 3,580 Covid patients have recovered on Sunday, taking the total recovery count to 6,16,998 with a recovery rate of 91 per cent till now. The doubling rate of cases in Mumbai has increased to 163 days, while the weekly growth rate has dropped to 0.41per cent.
Officials said that there is a limit on stretching the testing apparatus. Maharashtra is among the states having conducted maximum tests and the positivity rate has also started coming down.
“We have increased daily testing from a maximum of 96,000 per day in the first wave to 290,000 per day in the second wave, which is many times more than what we were doing last year. We have maintained tracing over ten contacts against one positive patient,” said Dr Archana Patil director, Directorate of Health Services.
Dr Subhash Salunkhe, state advisor on the Covid-19 and former director-general of health services, said, “There is no doubt that testing is very important, but testing apparatus also has its limitations. There are operational difficulties as we cannot stretch them beyond a limit. We are also facing challenges in contact tracing as the entire machinery is overbur- dened with multiple responsibil- ities such as vaccination. We are trying to find out alternatives to deal with the situation.”
According to Dr Tatrarao Lahane, director, Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), the deaths have increased corresponding with the surge of the virus. “We saw increasing deaths due to the sec- ond wave which was more lethal than the first one. The current deaths are of those who have been affected mostly two weeks ago. Due to the lockdown, we will see the deaths stabilising and even coming down in the coming days,” said Lahane.
They have seen the new cases stabilising in 19 districts across the state. The numbers will come down further in the next 15 days. The stabilisation will be replicated across the other districts too in the coming days. “This trend has reduced the load on our medical infrastructure also. There is no problem now with the oxygen supply and people are the hospital beds are available to patients,” said Lahane.
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