Maharashtra city imposes 10-day lockdown to curb Covid spread; Details here

The Kolhapur administration in Maharashtra on Tuesday decided to impose a strict lockdown from Wednesday for 10 days to curtail the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The decision was taken in a meeting today, which was attended by the Rural Development Minister, Guardian Minister, Minister of State for Health.

According to reports, only milk and medicine supply will continue every day and the rest of the essential shops will remain closed.

Besides Kolhapur, Sangli guardian minister Jayant Patil has also announced a complete lockdown in the district for eight days.

The lockdown will come in force from midnight of 5 May.

Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government has demanded the Centre enhance the present allocation of liquid medical oxygen (LMO) to the state by at least 200 metric tonnes (MT) which will help in better management of the demand for the life-saving gas.

Oxygen requirement on rise in 16 districts

Maharashtra chief secretary Sitaram Kunte said 16 districts -Palghar, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur, Solapur, Nandurbar, Beed, Parbhani, Hingoli, Amravati, Buldhana, Wardha, Gadchiroli and Chandrapur are showing continuous growth in Covid-19 positive cases and the oxygen requirement is on the rise.

Daily Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra dropped below 50,000 to 48,621 on Monday for the first time in the last 30 days, taking the tally to 47,71,022.

With 567 more patients succumbing to the viral infection, the overall toll mounted to 70,851, the state health department said.

On April 3, Maharashtra had reported 49,447 infections. On April 1 and 2, 43,183 and 47,827 cases were added, respectively.

The state had reported an average of 60,000 cases in most of April.

Of the 567 fatalities, 283 had occurred in the last 48 hours.

Lockdown-like curbs in Maharashtra

Given the alarming surge in the cases, the state government had imposed lockdown-like curbs in the state on 5 April coupled with prohibitory orders and restrictions on the movement of people. The curbs were later extended till 15 May.

Maharashtra health Minister Rajesh Tope has said that the positivity rate in state has dropped from 27% to 22%.

"We're testing 2.80 lakh persons daily and there's been no shortage in testing. From 63,000, tally for Covid patients have come down to 61,000," he added.

At 84.07%, our recovery rate is the highest in the country, Tope said.

On Monday, 2,11,668 tests were conducted, taking the overall number of samples tested so far to 2,78,64,426, the department said.

A total of 59,500 patients were discharged during the day, taking the count of recoveries in Maharashtra to 40,41,148, it said.

Maharashtra's recovery rate stands at 84.7% while the case fatality rate is 1.49%.

Currently, 39,08,491 people are in home quarantine and 28,593 are in institutional quarantine.

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