Maharashtra govt announces night curfew in state from March 28 amid surge in COVID cases

Amid the huge surge of COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra, CM Uddhav Thackeray on Friday announced that a night curfew will be imposed in the state from March 28. This decision was taken after he chaired a review meeting of the novel coronavirus situation in the presence of multiple Ministers and key officials of each district. Maintaining that the COVID-19 threat has increased, he directed all districts to focus on the availability of health facilities, beds and medicines. While Thackeray stressed that he has no intention of imposing a statewide lockdown, he empowered the District Collectors to impose it in districts where the number of patients is increasing rapidly.

Moreover, he warned that stricter restrictions will have to be imposed in the future if people do not follow COVID-19 prevention norms. Revealing that shopping malls shall remain closed from 8 pm to 7 am as per the new rules, the CM ordered action to be taken against establishments flouting SOPs. On this occasion, Medical Education Minister Amit Deshmukh called upon the Centre to make the COVID-19 vaccines available in large numbers to the state. He also stressed that the vaccination of teachers, professors and those working in the public transport system should be done on a priority basis. 

COVID-19 crisis in Maharashtra

For the second day in a row, Maharashtra crossed its previous highest one-day spike in COVID-19 cases with 35,952 more persons testing positive on Thursday. This propelled the state's COVID-19 tally to 26,00,833. At present, there are 2,62,685 active cases in the state. With 20,444 COVID-19 patients discharged in the day, the number of recovered soared to 22,83,037. 111 deaths were reported on Thursday. Out of the total deaths reported in the day, 66 occurred in the last 48 hours, 28 in the last week and the rest from the period before. 

Until now, a total of 53,795 persons in the state have died owing to COVID-19. So far, 1,88,78,754 samples have been tested for the novel coronavirus in labs operational across the state. While 13,62,899 persons are under home quarantine, 13,770 others have been admitted to institutional quarantine centres. The COVID-19 positivity rate, recovery rate and fatality rate in Maharashtra stand at 13.78 per cent, 87.78 per cent and 2.07 per cent respectively.