6-day old infant among 335 COVID-19 cases in Maha, toll rises to 13

A 6-day old male infant, his 26-year old mother, a policeman and a nurse are among the 33 new Covid-19 positive cases clocked in Maharashtra, taking the total number to 335, while one more person died in Mumbai, here on Wednesday, officials said.

The infant was born late at night on March 26 at a Chembur private hospital where a patient undergoing treatment was later found Covid-19 positive,” the child’s distraught father V. Singh, 32, told IANS.

“We were asked to immediately leave the hospital which was being quarantined and the doctors refused to attend to us. But, but we refused to leave. The reports of my wife and our son came positive around midnight and since then we are in Kasturba Hospital. We are requesting the government to ensure that proper care is given to our infant son,” said Singh, breaking down.

The Covid-19 death toll shot up by two today, taking the total to 13 in Maharashtra.

They include a 51-year old man and a 75-year old man, both from Mumbai with no history of foreign travel, health officials said.

Among the other patients found positive today include a nurse and a patient from a well known private hospital, a policeman, a first case of a man infected from the heavily congested Dharavi – notorious as Asia’s biggest slum in central Mumbai.

Among the new patients today are 30 from Mumbai and 2 from Pune besides one from Buldhana, with the highest spurt of 115 cases in the past 36 hours from 220-335.

Besides Mumbai and Pune, the other cases are in Thane, Sangli, Nagpur, Ahmednagar, Yavatmal, Buldhana, Satara, Kolhapur, Aurangabad, Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri, Gondia, Jalgaon, Nashik, besides one from Gujarat.

The state has so far notched 13 Covid-19 deaths, including 9 in Mumbai, and one each in Palghar, Pune and Buldhana.

Among them the state’s youngest victim, a 40-year old suburban home-maker with no history of foreign travel, and a medico in his early 80s, said officials.

Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Health Minister Rajesh Tope have again appealed to the people to remain indoors and maintain social distancing.

“The ‘war against coronavirus’ has reached a crucial stage and this is the time to exercise extreme precautions. Please do not step out of your homes for your own safety,” the CM pleaded.

According to officials, one of the reasons for the huge increase in cases on Tuesday is attributed to the Mumbai population density, especially in sprawling dingy slums with tiny tenements – which make up half of the country’s commercial capital.

The slums house millions of people eking out an existence in cramped quarters, with common sanitation facilities, insufficient water supply, no open spaces or greenery, making them a potentially fertile ground for diseases with little or no scope for ‘social distancing’.

To address the serious problem, the Municipal Commissioner Praveen Pardeshi on Tuesday ordered requisitioning of all vacant premises like flats, buildings, hotels, lodges, clubs, ships, hostels, community halls, dharamshalas, etc to convert them into quarantine centres for low-risk or high-risk slum dwellers who have come in contact with Covid-19 patients.-IANS News / QUAID NAJMI