Maharashtra saw a fresh surge in Covid cases on Thursday, with the state’s daily caseload shooting up by 60 per cent to 5,218 in the last 24 hours. At 2,479, Mumbai, too, saw a sharp upturn in cases over the last 24 hours, with the number of tests also scaled up from 8,131 to 20,408 within that period of time.
The fresh cases in the state on Thursday also marked the highest single-day count reported since February. The spike was attributed to a two-fold surge in daily testing in the state.
The health officials are anticipating a further surge in caseload, thereby indicating that a fourth wave of the pandemic could well be in play in the state.
The rise in daily testing in the state also contributed to a decline in the test positivity rate (TPR) — the number of positive cases out of the total tests conducted — from 12.32 per cent to 9.31 per cent. According to the data released by the public health department, on June 22, the state conducted a total of 26,457 tests of which 3,260 samples were detected with SARS-Cov-2—the virus that causes Covid-19. The tests on Thursday increased to 55,990, with 5,218 patients diagnosed with Covid-19.
The fresh cases in the financial capital, up from 1,648 on Wednesday, also marked the highest single-day tally of infections in the city since January. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), in its release, stated that since the portal of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) wasn’t functional in the last couple of days, some backlog cases were reported in Thursday’s report.