The Maharashtra government will soon issue a notification of extending COVID-19 norms till August 31 on the lines of the Central government’s decision of extending the guidelines till end of August.
The decision of extending curbs in Maharashtra was taken during the Covid Task Force meeting which is being chaired by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.
During the meeting, the public health department of state said that it is not in favour of allowing people with two COVID-19 doses to commute in Mumbai local trains amid the threat of spread in infection due to Delta Plus Variant. However, the Task Force discussed the issue but no decision has been taken yet in the matter.
On the other hand, the health department proposed opening of shops up to 8 pm but further tighten restrictions of Level 4 and 5 in 9 districts with high weekly growth in patients and in 10 districts with high positivity rate.
Besides, the Task Force headed by Dr Sanjay Oak at meeting with CM Uddhav Thackeray during the meeting made a strong case for Covid Appropriate Behaviour in Maharashtra as the threat from Delta Plus Variant still exists.
Public health minister Rajesh Tope had said his department has submitted the proposal to relax curbs in 14 of the total 36 districts where the average Covid-19 growth rate has been below 1% for the past three weeks.
Maharashtra reported 6,857 new coronavirus infections and 286 fresh fatalities on Wednesday, taking the tally of cases to 62,82,914 and the death toll to 1,32,145, a state health department official said.
The state witnessed a rise in new COVID-19 cases and fatalities as compared to Tuesday, when it had reported 6,258 infections and 254 deaths.
With 6,105 patients getting discharged from hospitals during the day, the count of recoveries in Maharashtra went up to 60,64,856, leaving the state with 82,545 active cases, the official said.
According to the official, the state has 4,88,537 people in home quarantine and 3,364 in institutional quarantine.
Maharashtra’s coronavirus recovery rate now stands at 96.53 per cent, while the fatality rate is 2.01 per cent.
The official said the cumulative number of tests climbed to 4,73,69,757, of which 1,93,042 were conducted in the last 24 hours.
