Maharashtra toll crosses 10,000, last 5,000 came at 1,000 deaths every 5 days

MUMBAI: Maharashtra not only went past countries such as Germany and Canada to reach the death toll of 10,000 in the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, it also registered on Saturday its highest ever singleday tally of positive cases. The addition of 8,139 new cases took the state’s tally to 2,46,600—making up 30% of India’s cases.

The state added 223 deaths on Saturday to take its toll to 10,116. It accounts for 45% of the country’s death toll of 22,123 so far. The last 5,000 deaths in Maharashtra have been added over a period of 25 days, with 1,000 deaths being added to the tally every five days.

Maharashtra’s peak likely to be 2-3 weeks away: Experts

While Maharashtra on Saturday reported its highest single-day tally of cases (8,139), Mumbai, in contrast, looked slightly stable with the daily update showing 1,284 cases and 39 deaths in the past 48 hours. The financial capital's total tally is now 91,745 cases (including 22,782 under treatment) and a death toll of 5,244.

Health minister Rajesh Tope chose to focus on the recoveries instead of the death toll. He said 4,360 patients got discharged on Saturday, with the state's recovery rate reaching 55.55%. He said, 1.36 lakh people had recovered so far. 6.8 lakh people are under home quarantine and over 47,000 are in institutional quarantine. "Of the total 12.85 lakh samples tested, 2.46 lakh resulted positive," Tope said.

Experts said that the rise in Maharashtra's overall cases is due to the surge of cases in Greater Mumbai (minus the BMC area), Pune, Aurangabad and Jalgaon. Maharashtra's peak is likely to be at least two to three weeks away, they said, while Mumbai peaked almost two months back and has now hit a plateau. The state's case fatality rate dipped a bit to 4.1% in the last 10 days from 4.49% on June 30. Mumbai's fatality rate decreased slightly to 5.7% from 5.86% on June 30.

The BMC update said of the 39 deaths reported on Saturday, 32 patients had comorbidities. While 25 patients were men, 14 were women. The age-wise breakup showed only three victims were below 40 years of age, 10 were between 40 and 60 years old and 26 were over 60 years of age.

Once the city's hotspot,, Dharavi reported only 11 new cases. "The new goal for Mumbai should be to achieve a mortality rate of less than 1%," said Dr Shashank Joshi, a member of the state task force. On Saturday, the mortality rate was around 3% with 39 deaths reported for the day and 1,284 cases.