For the first time in nearly a month, new cases outweighed recoveries with Maharashtra reporting 997 new COVID-19 cases on Friday as against 945 new recoveries.
The slight rise has now taken the active case tally to 12,290.
Maharashtra also reported its highest fatality surge in more than a fortnight, with 41 deaths taking the cumulative death toll to 1,40,516. The case fatality rate remains constant at 2.12%.
The total cases now stand at 66,22,345 while the State’s cumulative recoveries have risen to 64,65,893 with the recovery rate at 97.64%.
“Of a total 6,37,47,431 laboratory samples tested thus far, 66,22,345 (with the average case positivity falling to 10.39%) have returned positive, with over 1.17 lakh samples being tested in the last 24 hours,” said Dr. Pradeep Awate, State Surveillance Officer.
‘Increase testing’
The Maharashtra State COVID-19 task force has directed the government to ramp the pace of sample testing, which had severely fallen during the week of Deepavali festivities. The low COVID-19 case surges in the past few days have been attributed to the low number of samples being tested, which has come down to an average 85-90,000 from the erstwhile daily average of 1.8 lakh-2 lakh samples.
Pune reported more than 220 new cases and 13 deaths, taking its total cases to 11,57,232 and its total death toll to 19,130.
According to the district authorities, the active case tally has fallen to a little over 2,100.
Mumbai reported 257 new cases — a reduction from the 300-plus daily cases of the past few days — taking its total case tally to 7,59,819 while the active count stood at 3,665. A single death took the city’s death count to 16,288.
Satara reported just 18 new cases and three deaths, taking the total cases to 2,50,723, of which just 197 are active, while the death toll stands at 6,456.
Ahmednagar reported 54 cases and two deaths, taking its total case tally to 3,40,574. The active cases have dropped sharply to 1,358. The cumulative death toll stands at 7,082.
