AURANGABAD: Five of the eight districts from Marathwada recorded daily Covid-19 positivity rate of less than 1% for screening conducted in the last 24 hours by Wednesday morning.
Aurangabad district registered daily Covid positivity rate of 0.83%, Parbhani (0.11%), Jalna (0.29%), Hingoli (0.48%) and Nanded (0.49%). While Latur has daily Covid positivity rate of 2.8%, Beed stood at 5.75% and Osmanabad at 5.19%.
While the weekly positivity rate of aforesaid five Marathwada districts, which will form a basis for a new strategy for easing restrictions being planned by the state government could not be ascertained officially, some of these districts may benefit from the proposal concerned.
Maharashtra public health minister Rajesh Tope has already said that the districts with lower than 1% weekly Covid positivity rate or lesser than the state’s average could witness further relaxation in existing curbs with final nod from the chief minister.
The progressive count of active cases of Covid-19 across eight districts of Marathwada reached upto 2,781 by Wednesday morning with the region showing average recovery and mortality rate of 97.04% and 2.50% respectively.
Meanwhile, rumours of Covid-related curbs getting lifted from immediate effect spread in parts of Marathwada in view of the comments made by Tope, prompting the authorities to dispel such hearsays. Latur district administration, in a public appeal, has requested citizens not to believe any rumours related to lifting of curbs. “The existing Covid-related will continue till further notice and all stakeholders are expected to abide by it,” Latur collector Pruthviraj B P said, adding that level-3 restrictions are being imposed on the line of many other districts from the state.
Marathwada so far has witnessed around 6,13,726 cases of Covid-19 since March last year which include 5,95,574 recovered patients and 15,371 deaths. A total of 22,36,911 RT-PCR tests and 28,04,688 antigen tests have been conducted across eight districts of the region. The average positivity rate for RT-PCR test was 15.4% and 9.6% for antigen testing. Beed district, which has a major share of total active cases in the region, has planned more aggressive testing as a measure to contain the spread of the pandemic.
