Mumbai: COVID-19 cases shoot up, breach 8,000-mark

People wearing facemasks as a preventive measure against the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus, crowd at a wholesale vegetable market during early morning in Mumbai. Pic/AFP

The city saw a major spike in the daily COVID-19 cases on Thursday with it recording more than 8,000 fresh infections. The numbers across the state even shot up and it recorded more than 43,000 cases over the past 24 hours.

Maharashtra saw 43,183 new cases taking the total tally to 28.56 lakh. However, the number of deaths due to COVID-19 has also been on the rise for the past few days, and about 249 deaths have been recorded over the past 24 hours, taking the state's death toll due to COVID to 54,898.

On Thursday, the city reported 8,646 new cases. Meanwhile, even the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) recorded 14,786 cases, the highest so far. The Thane Municipal Corporation area, Navi Mumbai and Kalyan-Dombivli Corporation area recorded 1,465, 1,060 and 964 cases respectively, in the MMR.

The state's recovery rate now stands at 85.2 per cent with 32,641 patients discharged on Thursday. The total number of active COVID-19 patients in the state is 36,65,33. Meanwhile, a total of 1.99 crore laboratory samples have been collected till date since March 2020, out of which 28.56 lakh have tested positive with a positivity rate of 14.3 per cent.

Mumbai's recovery rate too has dropped and stands at 84 per cent while the doubling rate has dropped owing to increase in cases and now stands at 49 days. Whereas, the city's overall growth rate has increased rapidly in the last one week as it currently stands at 1.38 per cent. The city has a total of 55,005 active cases.

Even as the deaths are increasing, the mortality rate of the state is steady at around 1.92 per cent. Till date there have been 54,898 COVID-related deaths across the state. The number of deaths due to other causes in the state is 1,364. These deaths are of patients who initially tested positive but later turned negative and died due to other complications. According to the state government's data, there are 249 COVID-related deaths in the state, and highest number of deaths was recorded in Nagpur city (50), followed by Aurangabad with 35 deaths. The MMR recorded a total of 34 deaths, including 18 in Mumbai. Civic officials said that out of these 18 deaths, 14 patients were suffering from other ailments and 15 were senior citizens.