Six months after the first death in Maharashtra, Covid-19 deaths and new cases continued to soar yesterday with fatalities crossing the 31,000 mark, health officials said here.
The state recorded 24,619 cases — lower than the highest tally of 24,886 (September 11) — and the total zoomed from 11,21,221 to 11,45,840 cases now.
Adding a staggering 468 more fatalities, including 70 old deaths reconciled now — although lower than the peak of 515 (September 15) — the state death toll increased from 30,883 to 31,351 now.
There was one death roughly every three minutes and a whopping 1,026 new cases added every hour to the state tally.
The state recovery rate improved for the third consecutive day — from 70.71% to 70.90% — while the current mortality (death) rate stood at 2.74% yesterday.
Against this, a record 19,522 fully recovered patients returned home, taking the total number of discharged patients from 792,832 to 812,354 till date — much higher than the 301,752 ‘active cases’ currently in the state.
Alarmed by the Covid-19 spread, people in several cities and towns in Maharashtra are opting for voluntary ‘curfews’ to control the pandemic, officials said yesterday.
Nagpur, the state’s second capital, has decided to go for a ‘curfew’ for two of the remaining weekends of September – starting from September 18 night till September 21 morning followed by September 25 night till September 28 morning.
Nagpur mayor Sandeep Joshi said the decision has been taken at the behest of demands from peoples’ representatives and the common citizens in view of the rising Covid-19 cases and deaths in the city. “Despite repeated appeals, some irresponsible citizens continue to flout rules and pose a threat. Lockdown is no solution as it is not permitted by the government. However, we have decided to implement a ‘curfew’ with voluntary participation of people,” Joshi urged.