After a lull, COVID cases, deaths go up in Maharashtra again

While the third COVID wave is unlikely to hit any time soon, Mumbai, the financial capital, is already seeing a rise in the number of cases, accounting for a quarter of cases in Maharashtra as of Thursday (October 21). On Friday, Mumbai recorded 400+ cases.

Maharashtra recorded 1,573 new COVID cases and 39 deaths on Thursday. Maharashtra’s total case count till date rose to 65,98,218 and the death toll stands at 1,39,925. The Mumbai region reported the highest 708 new COVID-19 cases, followed by 458 cases from Pune region.

On Friday, Mumbai reported 421 new coronavirus infections and five fresh fatalities, taking the tally of COVID cases to 7,52,807 and the death toll to 16,202.

For the third day in a row, the financial capital has reported more than 400 COVID-19 cases.

A day before, the city had witnessed 421 COVID cases and five fatalities. On Wednesday, 473 cases and four deaths were registered.

About a week back, the picture looked very encouraging as the cases were falling consistently. On October 17, Mumbai reported the lowest daily deaths for the first time in several months. The fact that the Maharashtra government decided to open movie theatres from Friday (October 22) speaks of the Uddhav Thackeray government’s confidence that things are heading towards normalcy. In fact, the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) too is not much worried about the rising cases. Health officials say the “Covid Curve” is static with no “cluster of cases” in the city.

Dr Avinash Supe, head of state death audit committee, said the overall case fatality rate (CFR) is down to 0.78, which is the lowest in the last five months. At the peak of the first wave, in September 2020, CFR rose to 13.27.

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While the second wave created terror across the country, Mumbai’s CFR remained within control at 0.70 and went up to 2.5 in May with maximum monthly death number rising to 1,701.

The state capital’s health machinery has worked relentlessly to bring down the death rate and the results are there for everyone to see.

BMC additional commissioner Suresh Kakani said the municipal administration is not too worried about the rise in cases because the availability of newer medicines has reduced risk of death to a great extent.

The Maharashtra COVID Task Force has warned of a possible third wave of the pandemic post-Diwali.