Case in cities decline, rural areas a concern

MUMBAI: Till a week ago, five districts were contributing the greatest number of cases to Maharashtra’s daily infection and death tally: Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur and Thane. By April end, two of these districts – Mumbai and Pune – have begun to record a decline in the numbers, though experts said it is still too early to see this as cause for cheer, as the state’s surge now seems to be driven from rural parts of the state and smaller districts with poorer health care infrastructure.

Since mid-March, Maharashtra has seen a sharp uptick in the number of Covid-19 cases. In the week ending April 8, the daily average of new cases reported from state was 51,469. In the week ending April 29 the average daily new cases were 63,652. According to Union health ministry figures, Maharashtra also led the surge in deaths reported over a 14-day period: 45.2% between February 18 to March 3; 42.7% in the first fortnight of April.

“The districts or the cities with weak health infrastructure and weaker tracking-testing fail to contain the spread effectively. In some districts like Sangli and Amravati which border neighbouring states, the spread become difficult to contain because of the inter-state mobility,” an official from state health department said.

The surge is no longer coming from densely populated urbanised districts like Mumbai, Thane and Pune, but from smaller ones like Nashik, Ahmednagar, Hingoli and Yavatmal among others. “Smaller districts like Hingoli, Parbhani, Ratnagiri do not have tertiary care facility. We have asked these district administrations to ramp up the infrastructure so that they can take on the extra load of cases and arrest the spread,” state health minister Rajesh Tope said.

The numbers bear this out. In the week between April 22 and 29, Mumbai’s active cases dropped from 82,616 to 67,255; Thane’s dropped from 80,743 to 56,973; and Pune’s from 117,337 to 104,529. In the same time period, Nashik saw a spike from 46,706 to 52,954; Sangli from 9,600 to 13,095; Chandrapur from 18,388 to 26613; and Amaravati from 6,280 to 7,243. As on April 28, 23 districts reported more growth rate than state’s rate of 1.55%, while in districts like Yavatmal, Chandrapur, Ratnagiri, it was more than 3%.

Nagpur district has reported 50,000 cases and 638 deaths in the week between April 24 and 30. Of these, 19,002 cases and 239 deaths were recorded in rural areas of the district.

On Friday, Nagpur added 6461 new cases while Nasik added 4,696; by comparison, Mumbai added 3,888 and Pune 10,019 new cases to the state’s tally of 62,919 new infections. The state now has a total of 4.6 million cases, and the death toll rose to 68,813 after the addition of 828 fresh deaths on Friday. The recovery rate in the state is now 84.06%.

Falling numbers, TPR

In the first week of April, Mumbai’s daily case average stood at 9,737. In the following week, the daily average dropped slightly to 8,879 and to 8,074 in the third week. In the ongoing fourth week of the month, the daily case average has further declined to 5,628. However, Mumbai’s daily Covid-19 test positivity rate – the percentage of tests that are positive, or TPR – has been on a steady decline, data shows. From 30% on April 4, when the city recorded the highest single-day surge of 11,206 cases, the test positivity rate came down to 10.79% on April 29, with cases dropping to 4,174.

State continued to report a daily caseload of over 60,000 cases, by reporting 62,919 fresh cases on Friday taking the tally to 4,602,472 and the death toll to 68,813 after the addition of 828 fresh deaths. Mumbai recorded 3,888 new cases, pushing the tally to 648,471 and toll to 13,125 after the addition of 89 deaths.

(Inputs from Pradip Maitra)