For the first time, more than 10,000 new corona cases were recorded in the last 24 hours across the state, the highest single-day surge reported so far. On Wednesday, 10,576 new infections were reported, increasing the progressive count in the state to 3,37,607 cases until now. The previous high of 9,518 was recorded on July 19. Officials have attributed this surge to aggressive testing.
There were 280 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, the second highest number of deaths in a single day so far. With this, the death toll increased to 12,556 on Wednesday. The previous highest was 295, reported on July 4.
Once again, the Pune Municipal Corporation reported more cases than Mumbai in the last 24 hours, with 2,111 cases and 71 fatalities, taking its progressive count to 43,645, with 1,117 deaths so far. In Mumbai, there were 1,310 new cases and 58 deaths in the last 24 hours. The total positive count in the city increased to 1,04,572, with 5,872 deaths until Wednesday.
Areas on the fringes of cities are emerging as hotspots. “We are seeing that in Mumbai, with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region reporting a lot of cases. We are also seeing more cases coming from Solapur’s rural areas than from within corporation limits. The same goes for Pimpri-Chinchwad, which is seeing a faster growth in cases than Pune,” said State Surveillance Officer Dr Pradeep Awate.
According to statistics from the state health department, 19 areas declared as red zones had 250,075 cases on July 20, as against 67,885 cases on June 3, when the state began relaxing lockdown restrictions in the red zones, comprising the nine cities of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Pune, Solapur, Aurangabad, Malegaon, Nashik, Dhule, Jalgaon, Akola, Amravati and Nagpur.
But a comparative analysis indicates, their contribution to the total cases is reducing. It has come down to 78.46% from 90.68% on June 3, which indicated a surge in cases in areas other than red zones, especially in rural areas
Of the 280 deaths, 117 were from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), 71 in Pune, 31 in Aurangabad division, 23 each in the Nashik and Kolhapur divisions, seven in Latur, four in Akola and three in Nagpur, while one of the dead was from another state.
