Only 717 +ve cases in city, 8776 were tested

However, overall count in state expected to cross 4-lakh mark before July-end

Only 717 of the 8,776 people tested for corona were found positive on Tuesday, taking the total positive count to 1,10,846 cases until now. “For the first time in the last three months, Mumbai recorded 700 cases on a day when well over 8,000 tests were performed. Moreover, the doubling rate of cases has now increased to 69 days,” said Municipal Commissioner I S Chahal.

Across the state, too, there was a drop in new cases, with 7,712 new infections and 282 fatalities being reported in the last 24 hours. The progressive count has now increased to 3,91,440, with 14,165 deaths so far. State officials said the overall count is likely to cross four lakhs before the month-end, on July 29 or 30, just 11-12 days after crossing the 3-lakh mark, on July 18.

Of the 282 deaths, 121 were from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), followed by 80 in Pune, 29 in Nashik,

18 in Nagpur, 12 in Kolhapur, nine in Latur, eight in Aurangabad and five in Akola. Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani said these results have been achieved after aggressive testing and timely tracing of the close contacts of high-risk positive cases. Moreover, appropriate measures were taken to curb cases across the city and create awareness about the virus. “It is good news for Mumbai, as cases have reduced drastically in the last three months. But we need to take extra care, as it cannot be predicted when this could change,” he said. Moreover, to deal with the surge in cases, the state government has decided to augment health infrastructure in each and every district. It has developed field hospitals in Mumbai and similar field hospitals are now coming up in other eight satellite cities — Thane, Navi Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivli, Mira-Bhayandar, Ulhasnagar, Panvel, Vasai-Virar and Bhiwandi-Nizampur — of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). So far, a total of 19.68 lakh tests have been conducted in the state, of which nearly 20 per cent were positive. There are 8.85 lakh people in home quarantine and over 42,733 in institutional quarantine.