Pune death toll nudges 300 while fatalities spike in Solapur, Satara

Six more deaths and more than 120 new COVID-19 cases were reported from Pune district on Wednesday, to take its death toll to 295 and its cumulative case tally to 6,604.

“As many as 124 new cases were reported between Tuesday evening and Wednesday evening,” said Pune district health officer Bhagwan Pawar.

Solapur district in Pune division witnessed an alarming rise in the number of deaths, reporting nine fatalities on Wednesday, to push the district’s toll to 64, while Satara district reported five deaths, to take its toll to 13.

The death toll in Pune division — which consists of the districts of Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur and Solapur along with Pune — has now surged to 377. Pune Divisional Commissioner Deepak Mhaisekar said only 2,954 cases are active in Pune district, while 3,355 people have been discharged thus far. As many as 26 of the new cases were recorded from Pimpri-Chinchwad.

Mr. Mhaisekar said a special task force has been deputed in Solapur in the wake of increasing deaths and cases. He said the division’s total cases currently stand at 8,122, of which 3,841 have been discharged, while 3,904 are active cases. He said 200 among these are critical.

Satara witnessed a spike in cases, reporting 59 new ones since Tuesday evening while Kolhapur, which had been seeing a steady rise in new cases since the past week, recorded only five new cases on Wednesday.

The number of deaths and new cases has shot up in Satara in the last eight days, with many of the fatalities said to be senior citizens with co-morbidities, who had just returned from ‘highly infected’ areas like Mumbai. “At present, Satara has 394 cases, of which 259 are active. Kolhapur has 383, of which 360 are active. Solapur reported 32 new cases to take its tally to 653 with 292 active cases. Sangli reported six new cases to take its total tally to 88, of which only 39 are active,” Mr. Mhaisekar said.

He further said the samples of 77,117 people have been tested across the division so far, of which results of 72,747 have been received, while the rest are awaited. “Of these, 64,516 samples have returned negative, while 8,122 have tested positive,” he said.

On Tuesday, Pune city authorities took a record 2,044 swab test samples, the highest number of tests in a single day. Pune district, including Pimpri-Chinchwad and Pune rural, had reported 327 new cases on Tuesday.

The fresh cases had included 14 personnel from the State Reserve Police Force, who had been deployed for duty in Mumbai. On Monday, the district had reported its highest single-day surge of more than 450 cases.