New high: 1,233 cases in state, Mumbai crosses 10,000 mark

On Wednesday, Mumbai recorded 769 new cases, Navi Mumbai 104, Thane 77, Aurangabad 33 and Malegaon 30. For Navi Mumbai, this is the highest single-day jump. It now has 519 Covid cases. After Mumbai and Pune that account for 75 per cent of cases in the state, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivali, Aurangabad and Malegaon are seeing a spike in daily cases.

Thirty-four more people succumbed to the infection taking the death toll to 651. Twenty-six people died in Mumbai, including an Uttar Pradesh native, one each in Jalgaon and Solapur. At least seven of the deceased had no other co-morbidity.

In Mumbai, the BMC is going to scale up its corona care centres from 14,000 beds to 34,000 beds to house patients mostly from slum pockets where social distancing is difficult to follow. New centres will be set up in Mahalaxmi Racecourse, BKC MMRDA, Nehru Science Centre, Mahim Nature Park and NESCO in Goregaon.

More intensive care beds are also going to be installed in Worli’s NSCI. Across Mumbai ICU beds have been increased to 4,750 from 3,000. Civic officials said Mumbai’s fatality rate stands at 3.9 per cent while recovery rate is 21 per cent, higher than the state’s 18 per cent.

Pune reported a total of 99 new cases with the case count rising to 2,300, district health officer Dr Bhagwan Pawar said. In PMC area, cases have crossed 2,000, Dr Pawar added.

Even as the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court reserved its verdict on the PIL challenging shifting over 1,400 people from the containment zone of Satranjipura to institutional quarantine, a record 44 persons from containment zones of Mominpura and Satranjipura tested positive on Wednesday.

Among the 44 cases is the city’s third Covid-19 death, which occurred on Tuesday night, taking Nagpur’s death tally to three.

“We got these new corona positive reports from Momunpura and Satranjipura containment zones. This has vindicated our proactive measures to detect cases. Unfortunately, it is not being understood in the right spirit and has been challenged in court,” Nagpur municipal commissioner Tukaram Mundhe told The Indian Express. “Our intention was to prevent further spread of the disease and, in turn, prevent deaths,” Mundhe added.

Five more deaths were reported from Akola and one from Amravati on Wednesday, taking Vidarbha’s death tally to 27.