Maharashtra sees lowest Covid cases in one week

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region crossed the half-million mark of Covid-19 cases but Maharashtra recorded its lowest infections in one week, health officials said yesterday.
The state witnessed 263 deaths yesterday, down by nearly half from the peak of 515, and the toll now is 38,347. Maharashtra recorded 10,244 new infections, the lowest since it witnessed 11,921 cases on September 28 - and over 14,000 lower than the peak single-day tally of 24,886 (September 11).
The number of cases as of yesterday was 14,53,653.
In a relief, the state recovery rate also shot up for the third day - from 79.64% to 80.0% - while the current mortality rate remained unchanged at 2.64%.
In Kerala meanwhile, the Congress party slammed Health Minister K K Shailaja and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for turning the state into a place with the third highest incidence of Covid-19 cases in the country.
Two-time former chief minister Oommen Chandy said Kerala today is only behind Maharashtra and Karnataka in the total number of cases.
“The test positivity ratio which should be around 5% today in Kerala stands at 14.56%. Both Vijayan and Shailaja have been blaming the Congress-led UDF for the spread, as we were protesting. But the fact of the matter is, Shailaja in August had predicted that Kerala will see daily cases spike to 10,000. When she said that Kerala never had protests of the Congress. And today as predicted by her, the cases have spiked like never before and they are blaming us for it,” said Chandy.
On Sunday Kerala had 80,818 active cases, while 139,620 people have been cured and the highest number of daily case touched 9,258 on Friday.
“Those who accused us of being traders of death should apologise. This government has always blamed others for their inefficiencies. First they blamed the spread on the arrival of Kerala expats, then they said it was the fishing community and now they blame the Congress. Instead of blaming others for their own faults, all efforts should now be made to see a concerted and joint action against the Covid spread,” he said.
Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala said a few cases of gross medical negligence have now come out from the Medical College hospital in Thiruvananthapuram. “There has been a total failure in Covid monitoring and with things going out of hand, Vijayan, who used to conduct daily press meetings, has now gone missing. This government has failed miserably,” Chennithala said.
State Congress president Mullapally Ramachandran said the way the Vijayan government is handling things has caused lot of discomfort for the hard working medical professionals.