State records highest deaths in a single day

Nagpur accounts for 170 of 423 deaths

For the second time since the beginning of the pandemic, Covid-19 death toll in Maharashtra crossed the 400-mark on Monday. The state has reported 423 Covid-19 fatalities in the last 24 hours, increasing the total death toll to 27,027. It is the highest single-day jump in the number of deaths, the previous highest was 422 which was reported on August 18.

Of the total deaths, 217 are from the last 48 hours and 96 are from last week, while the rest 110 deaths are from the period before last week. Of the 423 deaths, 170 deaths occurred in Nagpur, followed by 90 in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, 62 in Pune, 30 in Kolhapur, 34 in Latur, 20 in Nashik, nine in Aurangabad and six in Akola, while two deaths were from other states.

Meanwhile a day after more than 23,000 cases, there has been a sudden drop in the number of cases on Monday.

The state has reported 16,429 corona cases in the last 24 hours, increasing the progressive count to 9,23,641 so far.

The latest 100,000 cases took only five days. The state took 96 days for the first 100,000, 22 for the second, 14 for the third, 11 for the fourth, 10 for the fifth, nine for the sixth, eight for the seventh and seven for the tally to move from 700,000 to 800,000.

Mumbai reported 1,788 cases and 31 Covid-19 deaths on Monday, increasing the total count to 1,57,410 with 7,897 deaths so far. The recovery rate of the city is at 79 per cent. However, the mortality rate still remains at 5 per cent.

Dr Shashank Joshi, a member of Maharashtra’s Covid19 taskforce, said a small upward trend has been observed since the last week of August. “We have to ramp up the testing considering we are currently under testing and under tracing. We have to optimise the testing considering our capacity, which is not happening currently,” he said.