COVID-19 positive cases in Maharashtra continued to skyrocket, with 88 new cases being reported on Thursday to take the tally to 423.
A 63-year-old man succumbed at the Kasturba Hospital in Mumbai on Thursday, taking the death toll in the State to 20. Mumbai has recorded the highest of 17 deaths, and saw a surge of 57 new cases, taking the city’s total to 235.
State health officials on Thursday confirmed three others deaths — a 61-year-old man suffering from cancer who succumbed at the Nair Hospital, a 58-year-old man with kidney ailment who succumbed at Sion Hospital and a 58-year-old man who died at a private hospital. All three died on April 1, and had no travel history.
A number of the fresh cases reported from Pune, Aurangabad and Ahmednagar districts were either people who had participated in the Tablighi Jamaat meet or infected others who came in contact with them.
Nine new cases were reported from Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, with four of these being people who had attended the congregation. “The remaining five from Pune city are contacts of previously diagnosed cases,” said Pune District Collector Naval Kishore Ram.
With this, Pune district’s tally of corona-positive cases stands at 59, of whom 18 have been discharged.
Ahmednagar saw nine new cases, of whom two were Indonesia and Djibouti nationals said to have been part of the Delhi conclave. The other seven, from Mukundnagar area and Sangamner, are said to have come into contact with these foreign nationals.
Buldhana district reported its fifth case. Authorities said the latest, believed to be of a boy aged 10, had come in contact with a man who died last week and then tested positive. Authorities are still clueless as to how the deceased contracted the infection.
On March 28, a 45-year-old man had died of pneumonia in Buldhana. The next day, his test results returned positive for the virus despite the deceased not having any history either of foreign travel nor of domestic travel. Soon after, a 12-year-old girl and a woman in her 60s, who were part of the man’s family, tested positive as well and were followed by two more positive cases.
The district administration has sealed the district at a number of points, while placing more than 60 people who had allegedly come into contact with the deceased in institutional quarantine facilities. Officials have screened more than 13,000 people so far from the ‘high-risk’ zone, which comprises the area from where the positive cases have originated.
With the new cases in Pune, the division, which includes districts from western Maharashtra, has now recorded 90 cases so far, with 52 from Pune and 25 from Sangli (including 24 are members of a family from Islampur tehsil) and two each from Satara and Kolhapur.
