Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
Maha sees 29,644 new cases, 555 deaths
MUMBAI: Even as the state government planned various methods to control the fatality rate, the high number of deaths continue to remain a concern. The state on Friday recorded 29,644 new Covid-19 cases and 555 deaths. The total number of deaths for the month till May 21 stood at 15,755, while the number in April was 13,835.
The death toll has now reached 86,618, with Mumbai leading with 14,464 deaths, followed by Pune with 11,015 deaths. The total number of Covid cases stand at 55,27,092.
Currently, there are 367,121 active patients across the state, of which, Pune tops with 58,840 patients, followed by Mumbai with 28,579 active cases. Dr Subhash Salunke, advisor to the Maharashtra government on Covid-19 management said the major focus now is to reduce the number of deaths.
“We are planning micro-management measures where we will decentralise our whole efforts to contain the virus as well as the death rates. We are making people aware that they need to test after they develop any symptoms. We are also ramping up the number of tests, and have asked the labs to fasttrack the reports. We are also beefing up the hospital infrastructure, like increasing the number of beds along with ensuring adequate oxygen supply as well as medicines for the patients,” said Salunke.
According to Dr Amin Kaba, who is associated with various city hospitals, several reasons contribute to the high fatality rate in the second phase. “The current mutant is more infective and virulent compared to the previous ones. In addition, we saw large youngsters dying as many believed they had stronger immunity and hence, they neglected the initial symptoms. In rural areas, the casual attitude of the people along with lack of proper hospital infrastructure added to the toll,” said Dr Kaba.
He said that government needs to speed up the vaccination process if it wanted to control the deaths. “The lockdown should have ideally coincided with large scale vaccination but that was not the case. Vaccination impairs the severity of the virus,” Kaba added.
The state government has imposed a severe lockdown in the rural parts of Solapur, which has been witnessing a surge in cases.
Meanwhile, the Aurangabad police have raided a prominent cloth store that was conducting the business and detained the staff and consumers, for violating Covid guidelines. In Nagpur, the police tightened its drive-by catching those roaming without valid reasons and conducted the Covid test on violators.