Maharashtra reports 33 new COVID-19 cases, Mumbai registers seven infections

Maharashtra reported 33 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, including seven from Mumbai, according to the state health department. In the last 24 hours, one fatality linked to the virus was also recorded, pushing the total death toll to 33. With the latest figures, the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the state has reached 2,370.

Of the total 33 deaths recorded in Maharashtra since January 1, 32 deceased had comorbidities (pre-existing health conditions that can increase the risk of severe illness), the statement said. A 61-year-old man with comorbidities from Nagpur became the sole fatality in the last 24 hours, as per an official statement.

Mumbai reports seven cases

Of the 33 fresh cases, Mumbai reported seven cases, followed by four each from the limits of the Thane, Pune, and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar municipal corporations, three each from Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad, two each from Navi Mumbai and Satara, and one each from the limits of civic areas in Kolhapur and Nagpur, and one each from Nagpur city and Chandrapur.

The tally of cases in Mumbai stood at 957, with 516 infections reported in June only, so far this year. The health department has conducted 26,136 COVID-19 tests across the state since January 1. A total of 2,041 patients have recovered to date.

ICMR NIV Director on COVID-19

As the COVID-19 active cases are dropping constantly after a peak for a few weeks, ICMR-NIV Pune Director Dr Naveen Kumar said the cases of the Singapore strain Nimbus variant has also been reported in India. "ICMR - NIV is involved in doing the diagnosis as well as the genomic analysis of the SARS-COV-2 variants, which are circulating... We are getting the SARS-COV-2 strains positive in the respiratory samples," Kumar said.

He further said, "So it has never been zero; maybe cases were very few, but after the rise of the number of cases in Singapore and other neighbouring countries, we also observed that the strain which is circulating in Singapore which was also being observed here in the last 5-6 weeks. So we also increased our surveillance and testing."

(With inputs from agencies)