With no let up in the alarming increase in the number of pandemic deaths and infections, Coronavirus on Wednesday claimed eight more lives taking the total number of deaths to 72 and the total infected cases from 1018 to 1135.
Mumbai, which is most coronavirus-affected city in the country, accounted for five deaths, while there were two deaths in Pune and one death in Kalyan-Dombivli.
With five fresh deaths, the total number of deaths climbed to 45. The deaths reported in Mumbai comprised: a 85-year-old woman who died at Kasturba Hospital, 46year-old woman, who died at KEM Hospital, a 64-year-old man a 54-year-old woman and 59-year-old woman, all of whom had tested positive for Covid-19 and passed away at KEM Hospital.
In Pune, a 44-year-old man who was known diabetic, died of Covid-19 in Nair Hospital, while 55-year-old man died of Coronavirus at Sasoon Hospital. A woman from Kalyan-Dombivli died of the pandemic at a private hospital in Mumbai.
As many as 117 new infected cases were reported from various parts of Maharashtra on Wednesday. Mumbai accounted for a maximum of 59 cases. The ottal number of infected cases in Maharashtra rose to 1135.
Meanwhile, twenty people among the 1400-odd people who attended Tablighi Markaz at Nizamuddin in New Delhi last month, have so far tested positive for Coronavirus. Latur district has recorded a maximum of eight positive cases, while Buldhana has recorded six cases. Two positive cases each have been reported from Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Ahmednagar, while Hingoli, Jalgaon, Ratnagiri, Nagpur and Washim have reported one positive case each.
In a related development, the medical bulletin put out by the State health department said: “Out of 27090 laboratory samples, 25753 were negative and 1135 have been tested positive for coronavirus until today. Seventy nine patients have been discharged till date after full recovery”.
“As many as 34,904 people are in home quarantine and 4444 people are in institutional quarantine,” the bulletin said.
Meanwhile, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said that it had identified institutional quarantine facilities across 24 Wards with capacity to house more than 11000 people.
“These institutional quarantine facilities are being used to house high risk and low risk contacts of COVID-19 positive cases from slums , chawls and congested localities in order to arrest spread of the epidemic in congested areas,” the BMC’s daily medical bulletin said.
“More than 900 such high risk and low risk contacts shifted so far. High risk contacts in such facilities are screened in fever clinics, swabs of COVID-19 suspects cases are immediately collected for testing and further protocol is followed according to test results,” the bulletin added.
According to the bulletin, the BMC is planning to designate isolation centres for triage of COVID-19 patients as per Clinical criteria. i.e., centres for suspects and asymptomatic positive patients, centres for LRTI symptomatic positive patients and centres for serious cases where patient required advance management.