Maharashtra on Tuesday reported 137 Covid-19 cases and three deaths, taking the state’s tally to 78,76,041 and the toll to 1,47,830, an official said. The addition to the tally was more than double the 59 cases detected on Monday, the fatality count was zero.
Mumbai accounted for 85 of the 137 cases, the three deaths comprised two in Pune city and one in Parbhani.
Meanwhile, Delhi recorded a nearly 26% jump in fresh Covid cases in the last 24 hours, while the positivity rate has been reported at 4.42%, according to data shared by the city health department on Tuesday. No new death has been reported in the city due to the coronavirus, it said.
The department said that 632 fresh Covid cases were reported on Tuesday, compared to 501 cases on Monday. The positivity rate stood at 7.72% yesterday. On Sunday, the Capital recorded a 4.21% positivity rate with 517 cases.
With the new cases, the city’s infection tally has increased to 18,69,683 while the death toll stood at 26,160.
Gautam Budh Nagar in Uttar Pradesh reported 107 new cases, out of which 33 were children, on Tuesday. The number of active cases in Gautam Buddh Nagar, adjoining Delhi, has reached 411. The city had reported 65 fresh cases on Monday.
Earlier in the day, the Kerala government rejected allegations that the state did not submit daily Covid-19 figures to the Centre and termed an ongoing campaign at the national level in this connection as “condemnable”.
Claiming that the state had submitted the Covid figures to the central government on a daily basis in the prescribed format without fail, health minister Veena George said the digital evidences could not be covered up. She added that the state had stopped publishing daily figures on April 10 due to decline in cases, but data was strictly being collected, submitted to the Centre and reviewed accurately.
“The argument that Kerala did not submit the Covid figures to the Centre is wrong,” George said.
The Centre had blamed Kerala for skewing India’s key pandemic monitoring indicators such as cases, deaths and positivity rate, after “noting” that the state reported figures after a gap of five days.
A letter from joint secretary Lav Agarwal to principal secretary (Health) Rajan Khobragade on April 18 said that due to the sudden data release, “India has reported a 90% increase in new cases, and 165% increase in positivity in a single day”.
(With inputs from agencies)
