Mumbai: Maharashtra reported 1,495 coronavirus cases on Wednesday – the highest single-day spike in the state taking its total to 25,992, while the number of deaths rose to 975 with 54 people dying of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, health department officials said. State capital Mumbai breached the 15,000-mark today with 800 new cases taking its tally to 15,747. Mumbai is the worst-hit city in India; it also accounts for 40 of the 54 deaths in the state in the last 24 hours.
Mumbai also accounts for 21 per cent of the total COVID-19 cases in the country. With a death rate of 3.71, 60 per cent of the total fatalities in the state are also from the metropolis.
For six days in a row, Maharashtra reported over 1,000 cases daily. A total of 422 patients have been discharged from hospitals, taking the number of recovered patients to 5,547, an official said.
Mumbai's Dharavi, Asia's biggest slum cluster, now has over a thousand cases. Pune, another COVID-19 hotspot, has over 2,800 cases.
The centre has declared Mumbai as one of the hotspots of COVID-19 in the country and various measures have been taken by the authorities to contain the spread of the virus in its densely populated slums.
Mumbai has ramped up testing with over 2,30,000 samples tested so far. Almost 3 lakh people are in home quarantine while over 14,000 people are in institutional quarantine.
A nationwide lockdown has been implemented since March 25 to stop the spread of the highly contagious virus which has been extended twice. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced 'Lockdown 4' which will be implemented with inputs and suggestions from states.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, in an online address last Friday, said any further extension to the lockdown will depend on how people behave and their strict adherence to lockdown rules.
"We have to come out of the lockdown one day or the other. We can't be living permanently like this. But to come out of this sooner, you need to follow rules and maintain discipline of social distancing and use face mask," Mr Thackeray had said.