Maharashtra on Friday logged 8,308 new COVID-19 cases, with 1,214 cases from Mumbai alone. But in a continuing worrying trend, 3,884 of the total cases came from the Thane Division, a major part of which forms the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Mumbai’s satellite cities-Thane and Kalyan-Dombivali-now seem to emerge as the new coronavirus hotspots in the state with the entire Thane district (city and rural) reporting 631 cases while Kalyan-Dombivali Municipal Corporation reporting 461 new cases.

West Bengal reported 1,894 new coronavirus cases on Friday with 563 from state-capital Kolkata alone. In the last 24 hours, 26 people have died in the state as the positivity rate continues to rise with a plummeting discharge rate. Bengal extended the ban on flights coming into Kolkata from six cities across the country-Delhi, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur till July 31. The flights were first banned from July 6 until July 19.

Community transmission of coronavirus is taking place in a few coastal areas of Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Friday as he announced lockdown in the affected regions. He, however, said the state government is equipped to handle the rapid growth of COVID-19 cases and there is no need for a comprehensive shutdown.

The COVID-19 tally shot past the 40,000 mark in Andhra Pradesh on Friday as 2,062 fresh cases were added in the last 24 hours. The state’s COVID-19 table now showed a total of 40,646 positive cases, with 19,814 of them being active after 20,298 patients were discharged.

India will cross the 20 lakh-mark in coronavirus cases by August 10 if the current rate of infection continues, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Friday morning as he launched a fresh attack on the government over its handling of the pandemic after the country’s coronavirus tally surged to 10 lakh infections.

India has signed bilateral agreements with France and the US that will allow airlines of each country to operate international flights starting Friday, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Thursday, adding that similar arrangements with Germany and the UK are being worked out too.

The Goa government has announced ”Janata curfew” between 8 PM and 6 AM till August 10 and a complete lockdown for three days on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said too many people were “stepping out to meet people at parties” and there was a low level of “awareness and sensitivity”.

The Union Health Ministry said there has been a continuous decline in daily growth rate of COVID-19  cases from 31.28 per cent in the beginning of April to 3.49 per cent in mid-July. “Rising recovery rate, from 52% in mid-June to more than 63% in mid-July, is aiding continuous decline in COVID-19 active cases,” the ministry said in a tweet. 

The number of virus cases in the United States has topped 3.5 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, and there have been 138,201 deaths, both figures the highest in the world. 

The coronavirus pandemic has killed over 5.89 lakh people globally since it emerged in China late last year. Over 1.38 crore people have been infected with the highly contagious virus.