Maharashtra Mumbai Coronavirus News Live Updates: Maharashtra’s coronavirus case tally rose to 1,80,298 on Wednesday with addition of 5,537 new patients while the death toll mounted by 198 to 8,053, state health department said.
The number of coronavirus positive patients in Palghar, a predominantly tribal district of Maharashtra, crossed the 5,000-mark on Wednesday with the addition of 257 cases, PTI reported. The case count in the district now stands at 5,239, the state department said in a release.
Meanwhile, the Pune Municipal Corporation has decided to conduct rapid antigen detection tests for diagnosis of Covid-19 after a couple of days, a top official told PTI. He said the move will decrease burden on the National Institute of Virology (NIV) and other laboratories.
Maharashtra, which has the maximum number of coronavirus cases in the country, has extended the lockdown till July 31. According to the latest guidelines issued on Monday, shopping, outdoor exercise and movement for all other non-essential activities have to be limited to neighbourhood areas. No such curbs were announced when such activities were first permitted from June 5 as part of the ‘Mission Begin Again’ initiative.
Meanwhile, India recorded 507 deaths and 18,653 coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, pushing the total number of infections to 5,85,493, including 17,400 deaths.
Sanitisation work at Turbhe Naka slum area in Navi Mumbai (Express photo by Narendra Vaskar)
To reduce Covid-19 deaths in Mumbai hospitals, the BMC on Tuesday released a nine-point protocol that will be followed under the new initiative ‘Save Lives Strategy’. BMC noted that many deaths in hospitals occur as patients remove oxygen to go to the toilet, especially between 1 am and 5 am. Under the new protocol, it will now be mandatory for every bed to be provided with a bed-pan. It will also be mandatory for junior and senior doctors to conduct meetings twice a day for updates on patients, either through video conference or telephonic conversation.
Meanwhile, a study conducted by NGO Praja Foundation has found that areas with poor civic facilities are more susceptible to the proliferation of Covid-19 cases.
Maharashtra is close to conducting 1 million tests by this week. By Monday, it had conducted 9.43 lakh tests. While Maharashtra has a positivity rate (number of people testing positive against the total tests conducted) of 18 per cent, Mumbai stands at 23.04 per cent, indicating higher viral transmission within the city.
In the new lockdown rules released yesterday, norms governing movement of public for shopping, outdoor physical exercise and non-essential travel have been issued. A proposal to increase staff in private offices from 10 per cent to 25 per cent has been deferred. So has the unlock of export-oriented industrial units and also those that are in located in areas inside the special economic zones and industrial estates within the municipal corporation areas of MMR.
The order mentioned that “staggering of work/business hours will be followed in offices, workplaces, shops, markets, industrial and commercial establishments”.
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Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/maharashtra-mumbai-coronavirus-lockdown-news-live-updates-today-covid-19-cases-tracker-6482757/