Maharashtra recorded 2,401 fresh Covid infections, pushing the count to 6,564,915 on Tuesday. The tally of active cases further reduced to 33,159 as 2,840 recoveries were reported in the last 24 hours. The day also saw 39 Covid related casualties including 10 in Ahmednagar, taking the state wide toll to 139,272.

Covid-19 situation in Maharashtra is under control as the average daily cases is on a decline for the past few months and active cases has also declined in the past two weeks to hit a new low since February 5 when 33,936 cases were reported.

However, districts such as Ahmednagar continue to be a cause for concern for the state by reporting 400 to 500 cases a day. On Tuesday, it clocked 397 cases including 14 cases in the city. Ahmednagar’s daily Covid infection was the second highest in the state after Mumbai. In the past five days, it has clocked 2,277 cases at a daily average of 455 new cases. The weekly positivity rate of the district is less than 5%. Last week, it was recorded at 4.28%, which was also highest among all other districts of the state.

The district administration has imposed a 10-day lockdown in 61 villages of the district starting Monday, October 4 and all shops, except essential ones will remain shut in this period and assembly of more than five people will not be allowed. Resumption of in person learning in schools at these 61 villages has not been allowed.

Rajendra Bhosale, district collector, said it was a precautionary step . “The daily cases are more concerning for us even though it has become stable. As a precautionary step, I decided to impose a ten-day lockdown in the villages from where most of the cases were coming,” he said.

Bhosale, however, said that expansion of testing was also behind high number of daily cases registered in the district. “We are taking all precautionary measures and have stepped up the daily testing and the number of daily cases is high. We are conducting around 20,000 tests a day and are looking to increase it even further,” he added.

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The lockdown in Ahmednagar district is likely to be further extended and the decision will be taken by the district administration after holding a review before October 13. Ahmednagar has reported a total of 333,222 Covid cases till date and currently has 4,280 active cases. Only 30% Covid beds in the district are vacant.

There was a delayed peak in the district, said Dr Shashank Joshi, member of the state task force. “Definitely there is a delayed peak in Ahmednagar and it has persisted for some time. In contrast, daily cases in Kolhapur, Satara, Sangli and Pune have come down, whereas in Mumbai and Thane they are still high but their testing numbers are also reasonably high. We are very aggressively looking at any new variant coming up in Ahmednagar district.”

From Monday, schools in urban areas were reopened for class 8 to 12. In rural areas, physical classes have also been resumed for class 5 to 7. In-person learning in schools was stopped in Maharashtra in March 2020 after the Covid-19 pandemic first hit the state.

All religious places in the state will reopen from October 7 and cinema halls, theatres and multiplexes will reopen from October 22. With 427 fresh Covid cases, Mumbai reported the highest number of infections in Maharashtra on Tuesday, taking its overall tally to 746,079 cases. It also recorded two fatalities, taking the city’s Covid death toll to 16,129.

In the past 24 hours, Maharashtra tested 131,340 samples and had a positivity rate of 1.82%. However, the overall positivity rate of the state stood at 11.04%, according to the data issued by the state health department.

The state also administered 427,782 doses of Covid vaccine on Tuesday, taking total number of doses given so far to 84,639,659, according to the data available on CoWin portal.