Maharashtra yesterday reports highest number of Covid-19 deaths so far

Maharashtra yesterday reported the highest number of COVID-19 deaths so far at 105, including 32 in Mumbai, taking the count of overall fatalities to 1,897. This is for the first time that Maharashtra has reported deaths in three digits. The number of cases spiked by 2,190 yesterday taking total tally to 56,948. However with a total of 17,918 patients were recovered and discharged, the number of active cases stands to 37,125.

Meanwhile, in some good news, the number of the discharged people is increasing also the recovery rate of COVID-19 patients in Maharashtra stands at 31.5 per cent.The doubling rate of COVID-19 cases also improved to 14.7 days from 11.5 in the last week in the state.

Meanwhile, the Brihanmumbai Municipal corporation has informed that the national Sero-Surveillance for monitoring of presence or absence of specific substances in the blood serum of a population to monitor the trend of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infection transmission is going to start in Mumbai soon.The BMC said that the ICMR is conducting the Sero-Surveillance in 60 districts of India, including 10



hotspot cities of which Mumbai is a part.

According to the BMC, the objective of the survey is to estimate and monitor the trend of Sero-prevalence for COVID-19 infection in high burden cities. It will determine socio-demographic risk factors for the COVID-19 infection and help in understanding the geographical spread of the infection in the general population and hotspot cities. This will be a base-line survey and there will be subsequent rounds. 

As per ICMR guidelines, it will be conducted in 500 adults aged 18 years or more, and in five clusters identified randomly - Kandivali (East), Kandivali (West), Deonar, Dharavi and Kurla-Sakinaka.The survey will be conducted with the help of local medical officer and health staff along with ICMR-National Institute of Immuno-Haematology teams supported by the WHO teams. Survey teams will collect blood from each participant house hold. The detection of COVID-19 specific IgG antibodies which is a sign of exposure to the COVID-19 infection will also be performed in the survey.