Maharashtra sees 63,309 new COVID-19 cases & 985 deaths; recovery rate at 83.4%

On Wednesday, April 28, Maharashtra recorded 63,309 novel coronavirus cases taking the State's COVID-19 tally to 44,73,394. At present, there are 6,73,481 active cases in the State. With 61,181 COVID-19 patients discharged in the day, the number of recovered soared to 37,30,729. In a heartening development, Mumbai too recorded only 4966 new cases. 

985 deaths —  149 from Pune, 92 from Thane, 83 from Nagpur, 81 from Aurangabad, 78 from Mumbai, 43 from Nandurbar, 40 from Nashik, 38 from Satara, 32 each from Ahmednagar and Yavatmal, 31 from Latur, 20 from Pimpri Chinchwad, 19 from Nanded, 16 from Parbhani, 15 each from Sangli and Hingoli, 14 each from Sindhudurg and Jalgaon, 13 from Jalna 10 each from Mira Bhayandar, Solapur, Kolhapur, Beed and Amravati, 9 from Gondia, 8 each from Navi Mumbai, Ratnagiri and Chandrapur, 7 each from Wardha, Dhule and Ulhasnagar, 6 each from Akola and Bhandara, 4 from Osmanabad and two from Vasai Virar were reported on Tuesday. Out of the total deaths reported in the day, 392 occurred in the last 48 hours, 251 in the last week, and 342 from the period before. Until now, a total of 67,214 persons in the state have died owing to COVID-19. 

So far, 2,65,27,862 samples have been tested for the novel coronavirus in labs operational across the state. While 42,03,547 persons are under home quarantine, 31,159 others have been admitted to institutional quarantine centres. The COVID-19 positivity rate, recovery rate, and fatality rate in Maharashtra stand at 16.86 per cent, 83.4 per cent and 1.5 per cent respectively.

Coronavirus vaccination in Maharashtra

Apart from COVISHIELD and COVAXIN, the DCGI accepted the recommendations of the Subject Expert Committee of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, paving way for the approval of Sputnik V on April 12. Moreover, the Union government declared that those vaccines that have been granted emergency approval for restricted use by USFDA, EMA, UK MHRA, PMDA Japan, or which are listed in WHO (Emergency Use Listing) will be granted emergency use approval in India. In a huge announcement on April 19, the Centre allowed the vaccination for people aged above 18 from May 1 onwards and mentioned that vaccine manufacturers can supply 50 per cent of its doses to State governments and in the open market.

The private hospitals shall have to procure their supplies of the COVID-19 vaccines exclusively from this quota. Earlier in the day, Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray announced that people aged between 18-45 will be administered the vaccine free of cost. A total of 1,31,82,778 persons have been inoculated in Maharashtra till now, 23,92,527 of them have received the second dose of the vaccine too.