COVID-19: Maharashtra records highest ever spike on Thursday

A passenger who arrived at Dadar station is tested for COVID-19 on Thursday. Pic/Ashish Raje

The state crossed the 55,000- mark on the second consecutive day on Thursday, seeing the highest COVID-19 cases since March 2020. The city, however, saw a drop on Thursday as it recorded cases below 10,000. The number of deaths in the state shot up over 300 yet again.

The state recorded 56,286 new cases taking the total tally of Maharashtra to 32.29 lakh. However, on Thursday the COVID-related deaths recorded in the state were 376, taking the total to 57,028 deaths in all.

On Thursday the city reported 8,938 new cases. The MMR recorded 16,574 cases. The Thane Municipal Corporation, Navi Mumbai and Kalyan Dombivali Corporation recorded a spike in positive cases with 2,001, 1,056 and 1,310, respectively in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

The state's recovery rate, which has dropped, now stands at 82.05per cent with 36,130 patients discharged. The total numbers of active COVID patients in the state are currently 5,21,317. The state saw 2.13 crore laboratory samples collected till date since March 2020 out of which 32.29 lakh have tested positive with 15.10 per cent positivity ratio, which too has been on a rise.

Mumbai's recovery rate too has dropped and stands at 80 per cent while the doubling rate now stands at 33 days. The city's overall growth rate has increased rapidly in the last one week and currently stands at 2.03 per cent. The total count of positive cases recorded so far now stands at 4.91 lakh cases and the number of tests carried out so far is 44.54 lakh. The active cases now stand at 86,279 in the city.

However, the mortality rate of the state is steady at around 1.77 per cent despite the increase in numbers of deaths recorded daily. The number of deaths due to other causes in the state was 1,445 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 376 COVID-related deaths in the state, and the highest number of deaths was recorded in Jalna district with 31 deaths on Thursday. MMR recorded a total of 79 death cases, including Mumbai with 25 and Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation recorded the highest number with 28 deaths. However there was a discrepancy in the numbers of the BMC and state government, and the civic body recorded 23 deaths. The civic officials said out of these 23 deaths, 17 patients were suffering from other ailments and 16 deaths were of senior citizens.