MUMBAI: With a remarkable improvement in doubling rate, the Maharashtra government has launched a ‘chase the virus’ campaign to further contain the spread of coronavirus infections across the state.
"Chase the virus" mission is being implemented for contact tracing in the country's financial capital. Under the "Chase the virus" campaign, 15 persons who come in close contact with a person who has tested positive will be strictly put in institutional quarantine.
''The number of COVID-19 patients in Maharashtra is now doubling over a period of 14 days unlike every two days earlier and the death rate has been brought down to 3.25 per cent from 7.6 per cent in April,'' Maharashtra’s Chief Secretary Ajoy Mehta had said on Tuesday.
Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had on 9 May said that Maharashtra has not been able to break the chain of coronavirus spreading in the state. The state's mortality rate was 7.6% in April.
"Success has been achieved in increasing the period over which the number of COVID-19 patients doubled in the state to 14 days from earlier 2 days," Mehta told reporters during a press conference held online. Mehta was accompanied by principal secretary of health department Pradeep Vyas and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner IS Chahal during the briefing.
Mehta said that 75,000 beds have been kept ready in Mumbai, which has emerged as the hotspot of the disease and the number of tests in Maharashtra is going up. The Chief Secretary added that 27 new laboratories will be operational in the state. At present, 72 laboratories are operational in Maharashtra.
He said that there are 16,000 surveillance squads in the state and 66 lakh people have been surveyed till now. He also claimed that the government laid stress on contact tracing to break the chain of coronavirus transmission.
Meanwhile, Vyas said 2.70 lakh isolation beds are available for patients. He said that 20 per cent of the patients in the state need oxygen and 10 per cent need the intensive care units. Chahal said that the BMC is taking steps to bring down the death rate due to the COVID-19 in the city to 3 per cent from 3.2 per cent.
Chahal said a dashboard is being prepared where the availability of beds in Mumbai will be uploaded after every half an hour. On Tuesday, the death toll due to COVID-19 in the state rose to 1,792 while the tally of coronavirus cases reached 54,758.
Of the total 4,337 fatalities due to COVID-19, Maharashtra tops the tally with 1,792 deaths followed by Gujarat with 915 deaths, Madhya Pradesh with 305, Delhi with 288, West Bengal with 283, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh with 170 each, Tamil Nadu with 127 and Andhra Pradesh and Telangana with 57 deaths each.
Of the 170 deaths reported since Tuesday morning, 97 were in Maharashtra, 27 in Gujarat, 12 in Delhi, nine in Tamil Nadu, five each in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, three in Rajasthan and one each in Andhra Pradesh, Chandigarh, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Telangana and Uttarakhand.
