Though officials have claim there have been a steady rise in the number of Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra, official figures shows that the state’s count doubled in just one week.
On April 19, the total number of cases in the state was 4,200 but in the last seven days, it has doubled to 8,590 (till April 27).
The state has recorded 4,390 cases in the seven days – from April 20 to 27.
This is because the state is seeing an average of 500 new Covid-19 cases on daily a basis since more than a week.
On Monday, it recorded 522 new cases.
Maharashtra took 30 days to cross 1,000 cases, after the first patient was reported on March 9. It crossed 2,000-mark in six days on April 13. It took six days to reach 4,000 casea and just four more days to cross the 6,000-mark, an analysis of the state data shows.
The trend also showed that Monday was the 24th consecutive day the number of new cases has been in three digits, which is why 8,292 cases were registered in April alone.
In Mumbai, the case count has gone up to 5,776 as 369 new cases were reported.
However, officials said that the situation is still under control as most of the new cases are from traced contacts.
“We can say that the situation is under control as we are aggressively doing contact tracing and most of the new cases are those who have been traced, following detection of Covid 19 cases,” said Dr Tatyarao Lahane, director, Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER).
“It is true that we were expecting a decline in cases from April 21, which is not happening, but the rise is also not exponential and now we will have to wait for another incubation cycle of 14 days, which is ending on May 3, before reaching to any conclusion,” Dr Lahane said. Two 14-day incubation cycles were completed on April 20, since March 22 when international traffic was stopped.
As the number of Covid-19 cases rise, the number of cases recovered so far also jumped to 1,282 as 94 patients recovered on Monday.
Meanwhile, the health department has conducted 1,21,562 tests at various public and private facilities across Maharashtra. Of them, 1,12,552 people tested negative. The death toll of the state also went up to 369 as 27 fatalities were registered on Monday. Of them, 15 were in Mumbai, six in Amravati, four in Pune and one each in Jalgaon and Aurangabad. With the total number of 219, Mumbai has the highest Covid-19 deaths.
Of the 27 deaths, 22 patients had co-morbidities. One of the deceased had contracted HIV and another was suffering with cancer, said health officials.
The mortality rate of the state has significantly dropped to 4.24 per cent from 7.41 per cent on April 13. However, it continued to be higher than the national mortality rate of 3.13 per cent till Sunday, stated the data of the state medical education department.
Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope said that the state is prepared for any situation. “We have set up 1,677 Covid-19 dedicated hospitals, where 1,76,357 isolation beds and 7,248 ICU beds are available. These hospitals are divided into three categories – for asymptomatic, mild and serious cases. We also have around 3,000 ventilators, around 80,000 personal protective equipment (PPE) kits and 2.82 lakh N-95 masks,” he said.
The state currently has 572 active containment zones. Around 7,861 survey teams, comprising doctors and assisting staff, have screened more than 32.28 lakh people.
It has also kept 9,399 suspected patients at government quarantine facilities, while 1,45,677 are home quarantined, stated health officials.
Meanwhile, deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar on Monday appointed four IAS officers Anil Kawade as cooperation commissioner; Saurabh Rao as sugar commissioner; Sachindra Pratap Singh as animal husbandry commissioner and Kaustubh Diwegaonkar as director, Ground Water Survey and Development Agency (GSDA). These officers will help in planning preventive measures and their implementation to arrest the spread of Covid-19 in Pune, where 1,027 cases has been registered till Monday.
