Maharashtra on Sunday recorded a fresh record high of 53 Covid-19 deaths in a single day - up from Saturday's 48 - and the number of positive cases shot past 22,000, health officials said here.
With 53 fatalities, the death toll shot up to 832 and the total number of coronavirus patients increased to 22,171, with the highest jump of 1,278 cases.
Of the total deaths, 19 were recorded in Mumbai, as well as one of a person hailing from Madhya Pradesh - taking the city's toll to 508 and the number of Covid-19 positive patients in the city shot up by 875 to 13,739, the highest spurt till date. Dharavi slum alone continued to be a major hotspot in Mumbai, notching 26 new cases, taking the total number of patients to 859, and 29 deaths till now.
Besides Mumbai, 14 deaths were recorded in Malegaon (Nashik), Pune recorded six, Jalgaon five, Dhule three, and Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Nandurbar, Solapur and Palghar one each. They comprised 33 men and 20 women, and nearly 75 percent of them suffered from other serious ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, heart problems and asthma.
The state has recorded 6 deaths of policemen due to Covid-19 and another 648 are positive, Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said on Sunday. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (Thane Division) continued to cause major worries with 544 Covid-19 deaths and 16,680 patients.
Pune Division trails a distant second with 168 fatalities and 3,048 patients.
The next area of concern is Nashik Division with 64 deaths and 976 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad with 14 fatalities and 641 patients, Akola Division with 24 deaths and 362 patients, Kolhapur Division with three deaths and 98 patients, Latur Division with 4 fatalities and 73 cases, and finally Nagpur Division with 2 deaths and 257 patients.
On the positive side, 399 more fully cured patients returned home, taking the number of those discharged to 4,199 till date. Meanwhile, the number of people shunted in home quarantine increased to 244,327 and those in institutional quarantine up to 14,46, while the state's containment zones decreased marginally from 1,243 to 1,237 on Sunday.
As many as 12,768 teams have carried out a survey of a population of around 55.6 lakhs in the state till date.
