Mumbai: Maharashtra on Wednesday recorded the highest daily count of 59,907 COVID-19 new cases, taking the total of cases to 31,73,261. Maharashtra also reported 322 deaths pushing the total to 56,652, according to the state health department.
Notably, Maharashtra had added the highest number of new cases in a day on April 4 with 57,074 cases. With this, the state now has 5,01,559 active cases.
Pune division recorded 12,772 fresh infections, of which 5,637 cases were found in Pune city, followed by Nagpur division which added 8,846 cases while 3,738 from Nagpur city. Nashik division also witnessed 8,181 cases, including 2,296 from Nashik city.
Mumbai, worst hit region in Maharashtra recorded 10,442 new infections and 24 deaths in one day, taking the overall caseload to 4,83,042 and deaths to 11,856. Mumbai circle, comprising Mumbai and other towns, reported 19,952 cases during the day while 71 patients lost their lives.The tally of cases in the Mumbai division on Wednesday stood at 10,10,998 while the count of fatalities is 20,808.
The state also saw 30,296 people recovered and discharged during the day, taking the count of recoveries in Maharashtra to 26,13,627, the department said.
Maharashtra on Wednesday conducted a record number of 2,31,250 tests, taking the number of samples tested so far to 2,11,48,736. The state's recovery rate currently stands at 82.36 per cent and the case fatality rate is 1.79 per cent.
A total of 25,78,530 people are currently in home quarantine while 21,212 others shunted in institutional quarantine.
No vaccine shortage in Maharashtra, says Harsh Vardhan
On Wednesday, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan slammed Maharashtra government's claim of shortage of vaccines as "utterly baseless" and stated that the "lackadaisical" attitude of the state government has "singularly bogged down" the efforts of entire nation to fight the infection.
Vardhan's furious statement came after Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope stated that many vaccination centres in Maharashtra are shut due to a shortage of the vaccines.
Vaccination halted
Pune shut over 100 vaccination centres due to vaccine shortage, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP Supriya Sule tweeted.
Supriya Sule on her Twitter handle wrote, "Pune District vaccinated 55,539 persons in 391 vaccination centres today. Several thousand people went back without being vaccinated because the vaccines stock was exhausted."
On the other side, Panvel Municipal Corporation issued an official notice saying the inoculation drive is being halted for the time being because of unavailability of vaccines. The notice read, "The drive temporarily halted in all government and private inoculation centres in Panvel, due to the unavailability of Covid-19 vaccines. Centres will be reopened once vaccines are back in stock."
Even Mumbai has claimed unprecedented time as Mayor Kishori Pednekar also said that there were 1.76 lakh doses of vaccines till Tuesday afternoon.