Explained: What’s the reason for the unusual surge in Maharashtra Covid-19 cases?

Staff working at Kailas Smashan Bhoomi, Pune on Thursday. (Express photo by Pavan Khengre)

India coronavirus cases: Maharashtra is going through a slightly unusual surge in the coronavirus numbers in the last one week. The quantum of rise in the daily cases in the last few days has been much more than what the state has seen so far.

In the last two weeks, the number of new cases being detected has almost doubled, from a level of about 10,000 to more than 19,000 now. Till now, Maharashtra had been showing much slower progression, usually reporting cases within a small range for about a week or so, before finding a new level. Part of the reason for the rather big jump can again be found in the testing numbers, which has increased significantly in recent days. Till about a week back, the state was testing about 50,000 samples every day, but it has now risen to more than 70,000 samples. On Friday, more than 93,000 samples were tested in the state.

The growth in cases is happening not just in Pune and Mumbai, but also in other towns like Nagpur, Aurangabad, Ahmednagar, Kolhapur, Solapur and Satara. The state already has 8.63 lakh people who have been infected with the virus till now.

Daily new cases since August 15.

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Daily new cases in Maharashtra since May 1.

While Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are contributing the biggest numbers every day, the fastest growth is happening in relatively smaller states of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Jharkhand now has more than 48,000 cases, having added more than 12,000 cases in the last one week. Chhattisgarh has added more than 12,500 during the same time, and now has a total of about 40,000 cases. Chhattisgarh is currently growing at over 5.5 per cent every day, while Jharkhand is growing at 4.29 per cent.

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Top ten states with maximum caseload

STATE	TOTAL POSITIVE	NEW CASES	TOTAL RECOVERIES	DEATHS
Maharashtra	863,062	19,218	625,773	26,311
Andhra Pradesh	476,506	10,776	370,163	4,276
Tamil Nadu	451,827	5,976	392,507	7,687
Karnataka	379,486	9,280	274,196	6,189
Uttar Pradesh	253,175	6,074	190,818	3,762
Delhi	185,220	2,914	161,865	4,513
West Bengal	174,659	2,978	147,553	3,452
Bihar	144,134	1,978	126,411	741
Telangana	138,395	2,511	104,603	877
Assam	121,225	2,891	92,718	345

Another state growing at a fast pace is Odisha which has been adding more than 3,200 cases every day for the last five days. The state already has more than 1.2 lakh people who have been infected till now, only marginally behind Assam which has the tenth highest caseload in the country.

On Friday, more than 86,000 new cases were discovered from across the country, the highest so far. The total number of infections crossed the 40-lakh mark on Friday. The last five lakh cases were added in just about a week. More than 31 lakh people, or about 77 per cent of all infected, have recovered from the disease so far, while the death count is now touching 70,000.

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