COVID-19: With the toll at 773, Maharashtra records highest ever death figures

A passenger from Gujarat is tested on arriving at Dadar station on Friday. Pic/Ashish Raje

The death toll of the state crossed the 700 mark on Friday with the highest ever figures, about 10 per cent of which was contributed by Mumbai. The fresh cases numbers in the state stayed over 66k on Friday. The city fresh case numbers stayed around 7k but for the second consecutive day the death toll was over 70. However, the number of discharged patients was much higher than the new cases in both Mumbai and Maharashtra.

The state recorded 66,836 new cases taking the total tally of Maharashtra to 41.61 lakh cases. However, the COVID-related deaths recorded in the state were 773 taking the total to 63,252 deaths in all.

Mumbai city saw 7,199 fresh cases, while MMR recorded 16,968 cases. The Thane Municipal Corporation, Navi Mumbai and Kalyan Dombivali Corporation recorded 1,196, 762 and 1,598 cases respectively in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

The state's recovery rate stands at 81.81 per cent with 74,045 patients discharged. The total number of active COVID-19 patients in the state is currently 6,91,851. The state saw 2.51 crore laboratory samples collected till date since March 2020 out of which 41.61 lakh have tested positive with 16.53 per cent positivity ratio.

Mumbai's recovery rate now stands at 84 per cent while the doubling rate now stands at 52 days, both of which has been steady since the last week, said officials. The city's overall growth rate has been steady in the past one week and currently stands at 1.31 per cent. The total count of positive cases recorded so far now stands at 6.16 lakh and the number of tests carried out so far is 51.63 lakh. The active cases now stand at 81,538 in the city. The city saw 9,541 patients discharged, more than the number of new cases recorded on Friday.

The mortality rate of the state is steady at around 1.52 per cent despite such a high increase in number of deaths recorded in the past few weeks. The number of deaths due to other causes in the state is 1,781 so far. These deaths are the cases where patients were positive and tested negative but later died due to other complications.

According to the state government's data there were 773 COVID related deaths in the state on Monday, and the highest number of deaths was recorded in Mumbai with 72, and there were 40 deaths in Solapur and Nagpur each. MMR too has crossed the three figure mark in the total number of deaths and recorded 180 death cases, including Mumbai. Civic officials said out of these 72 deaths in Mumbai, 37 patients were suffering from other ailments and 48 deaths were of senior citizens.

Vaccine stock runs out every 2-3 days

The crowds keep coming, but the stock of vaccines in the city runs out almost every two to three days. While a fresh consignment of about 1.1 lakh doses had come in on Tuesday night, it was almost used up and 52 vaccination centres did not operate on Friday due to lack of stock. Due to shortage, centers have been instructed by the BMC to prioritise second dose beneficiaries. A consignment of vaccines was expected on Friday night or Saturday morning, said civic officials.

41,61,676
Total No. of cases in Maharashtra

16,968
Total no. of cases reported in MMR in the 24 hours up to Friday

72
No. of city deaths on Friday (37 patients were suffering from other ailments and 48 were senior citizens)

9,541
Patients recovered and discharged in city on Friday

21,76,375
Total No. of people vaccinated

48,280
No. of people vaccinated on Friday [24,204 got first dose and 24,076 second]