Second wave fear: Maharashtra CM appoints vaccine task force

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday appointed a task force to manage the distribution of Covid-19 vaccination in Maharashtra. “The government is in constant touch with Adar Ponawalla of the Serum Institute of India to track the development of the coronavirus vaccine,” Thackeray said.

The CM had in an address to the state said Maharashtra would need 25 crore doses of the vaccine for the state’s population as per the two doses each required for its 12.5 crore population.

The Maharashtra CM said the state had brought the curve down, but the rush during Diwali could now lead to the second curve. The second wave could be a tsunami if due precautions were not taken. Maharashtra deputy CM, Ajit Pawar said a lockdown could be imposed, if the situation did not improve in the state. Pawar said the government would review the Covid situation after the next eight to ten days and decide the way ahead. “Citizens were careless and there was a lot of crowding in markets during Diwali,” Pawar said.

Maharashtra still tops the Covid hit states in the country and is witnessing a surge in cases after a brief period of the drop in cases with Pune, Mumbai and Thane seeing a spike in cases. Mumbai has seen a doubling of cases in three days and active cases in the city are at 9,700. Pune has 4,917 active cases with 442 critical cases while the total active cases in Pune Metropolitan Region has crossed 10,000. Active cases in the Pune region had gone down to 8,545 cases on November 10, 2020. The rise in cases has also been attributed to an increase in testing in Mumbai and Pune in the last few days.

Sahil Deo, a data scientist and co-founder of CPC Analytics, said with more people venturing out and meeting each other this was bound to happen but the next eight to ten days are going to be crucial. “This is the last part of the battle against Covid-19. If we get through this, we have made it,” Deo said.

In a bid to control the spread, the Maharashtra government has from November 25, mandated RT-PCR tests for those entering Maharashtra by air, road or rail. Travellers from Delhi, Rajasthan, Goa and Gujarat will need negative RT-PCR test reports done 72 hours before landing. District collectors in Maharashtra have been asked to screen people at the state boundaries.

Maharashtra has a total of 17.84 lakh confirmed cases with 82,916 active cases, 16.54 lakh recoveries with 46,653 deceased. Maharashtra has so far conducted one crore cases tests but this is lower than tests conducted in UP, Bihar and Tamil Nadu.