MUMBAI: While Maharashtra and Mumbai reported an increase in cases on Tuesday, the city reported only one Covid-19 death for the second time in the last three days. Maharashtra reported 4,355 cases and 119 deaths taking the total cases to 64.3 lakh and deaths to 1,36,355.
Besides the 119 deaths reported on Tuesday, 169 old deaths were added to the cumulative toll as part of the data reconciliation exercise. Mumbai added 272 cases. With this, the city’s total Covid caseload rose to 7.4 lakh and the deaths touched 15,952. Civic authorities said they will continue testing higher numbers given that the Delta variant has been found in 70% of samples sent for genome sequencing. The BMC’s genome laboratory found Delta in 128 of the 188 samples sequenced.
The city’s positivity rate, which has been steadily inching upwards, stood at 0.93% on Tuesday. It had been hovering between 0.5% and 0.7% between August 15 and August 21. The active cases in the state also remained under 50,000 for the second day in a row. State government officials said it has been 10 days since the easing of curbs, but there has been no significant rise in cases.
“The real challenge is the upcoming festival season. The district machinery has been asked to implement strict Covid-appropriate norms,” said an official.
