Maha Assembly polls: Eknath Shinde to kick off poll campaign from today, to hold 2 rallies in Mumbai
Meanwhile, BJP has said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to hold 11 rallies in Maharashtra from November 8 to 14.
Maharashtra has reported its third death of a patient infected with the Delta Plus Covid-19 virus variant, as the total number of patients with the variant stood at over 65 to date, officials said.
A 69-year-old man diagnosed with Delta Plus has succumbed in Nagothane, Raigad, while a middle-aged woman infected by the same variant is under treatment in nearby Uran town.
Late Thursday, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) received the Delta Plus positive sample reports of a 60-year-old woman from the eastern suburbs of the city, who had passed away on July 24.
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Prior to that, the first patient of Delta Plus in the state — an 80-year-old man — had expired in Ratnagiri on June 25, said the officials.
On Wednesday, the Maharashtra Health Department had pegged the number of Delta Plus variant patients in the state at 65 to date, as per data from the Institute of Genomics Integrative Biology lab.
Among these 65, the highest 13 are from Jalgaon, 12 from Ratnagiri, 11 from Mumbai, six each in Thane and Pune, three in Palghar, two each in Raigad, Nanded, and Gondia, and one each from Sindhudurg, Aurangabad, Kolhapur, Sangli, Beed, Nandurbar, Akola, and Chandrapur.
The patients include 33 women and 32 men, and a whopping 33 cases ~ or nearly half ~ of those infected are in the 19-45 age group, while 17 are 46-60 years and seven in the above-60 age group.
As a precaution, the Health Department has started searching for the close contacts of these infectees on a war footing, their travel history, vaccination status, recent medical status, and other relevant details to prevent more infections, said the officials.
The Delta Plus (AY.1) is a mutation of the highly transmissible Delta variant of Sars-CoV-2 (B.1.617.2). It was detected in Maharashtra during the second wave of coronavirus. The Union health ministry declared it as a variant of concern in July. Amid growing cases of Delta Plus in Maharashtra, which currently stands at 65, medical experts have stressed the need to ramp up the Covid-19 vaccination process.
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