Maharashtra's Delta Plus Variant Count Crosses 100 After 27 New Cases

Maharashtra recorded 27 new cases of the Delta Plus COVID-19 variant on Monday, taking the total number of Delta Plus cases in the state to 103, according to the state health department.

Meanwhile, out of the 188 samples of the first batch sent to Mumbai's Kasturba hospital for genome sequencing of COVID-19 positive patients in the capital, 128 have been identified with the Delta variant -- 68 per cent of the samples.

Two samples, or 1.06 per cent of samples, were detected with the Alpha variant while 24 samples, or 12.76 per cent, had traces of the Kappa variant.

Maharashtra is conducting genome sequencing tests of COVID-19 positive patients' samples on a regular basis to ascertain the extent of spread of mutants of the virus.

The state recorded a total of 3,643 new coronavirus positive cases on Monday, the lowest after February 15 this year, and 105 deaths while 6,795 patients recovered, a health department official said.

The number of active cases in Maharashtra fell below the 50,000-mark to 49,924. Maharashtra had reported 3,365 new cases on February 15.

The overall tally of COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra rose to 64,28,294 and the death count to 1,36,067. The number of recoveries has risen to 62,38,794, the official said.

Maharashtra's case recovery rate now stands at 97.05 per cent while the fatality rate is 2.11 per cent. With 1,53,558 new tests, the number of samples tested so far in Maharashtra mounted to 5,24,45,689, the official said.

Among the eight regions of Maharashtra, Pune region reported the highest 1,628 new COVID-19 cases, followed by 757 cases from the Kolhapur region. Among the other regions, Nashik region reported 628 new cases while Mumbai reported 481.