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Journalism of Courage
The daily case count of coronavirus infections in Pune district crossed 10,000 for the first time in eight months, with 10,076 cases being reported on Friday. Two deaths were also reported from the district, taking the total coronavirus toll in Pune to 6,341.
More than half of Friday’s cases — 5,480 — came from Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) areas while Pimpri-Chinchwad detected 2,562 new cases, according to the latest data from the health department of Pune Zila Parishad.
Pune district had last clocked over 10,000 cases on May 8 last year, at the peak of the second wave. For several days over a month-long period during that time, the district had been reporting over 10,000 cases. On many occasions, Pune’s count was the highest for any city in the country.
Pune also accounted for 232 of the 238 confirmed detections of Omicron variant in Maharashtra on Friday. The state has so far detected 1,605 confirmed infections of the Omicron variant, the highest in the country, of which 677 have come from Pune. Mumbai has contributed 629 confirmed Omicron cases. Friday’s detections were based on the latest results of genome sequencing done at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.
The active case count in the city has crossed 50,000, the highest since May 23 last year. At one point during the second wave, in the first week of May, Pune had as many as 1.2 lakh active patients. But before the cases began to rise again during the current wave, active cases had dropped to well below 2,000.
While the cases have been surging in Pune every day, Mumbai once again showed a significant decline on Friday, reporting a little more than 11,000 cases. Maharashtra state also is showing signs of stabilisation with 43,211 cases on Friday, well below Thursday’s figure of 46,406. Maharashtra’s daily count of cases has remained in the mid-40,000s for three consecutive days now.
