Pune broke all previous records by detecting 9,126 cases of coronavirus infections on Friday, the highest number ever recorded by any Indian region. Mumbai had registered 8,646 infections just a day before, which was the previous high for any area. On November 1 of last year, Delhi had reported 8,593 cases.
More than 8,000 cases per day have been regularly reported in Pune. Pune has already surpassed the 8,000-person mark four times in the last week, though Delhi has only done so once. To put things in perspective, Karnataka, which was the second-largest contributor of positive cases after Maharashtra, on Friday, only registered about 5,000 cases. Even Mumbai reached a new high on Friday, with 8,948 new cases recorded. Maharashtra, which has been responsible for more than 60% of all new infections in India during the second wave, announced a new high of 47,913 cases on Friday. After five and a half months, India re-entered the 90,000-case-per-day range. On September 16, last year, the country’s highest number of cases recorded in a single day was 97,894. The record appears to be on the verge of being broken in the coming days.
On any given day, ten per cent of all cases in the country originate in Pune. Pune has been one of the epicentres of the epidemic in India since the beginning. The first positive case in Maharashtra was discovered on March 9 of last year in Pune. And, after being outpaced by Mumbai in the early stages of the pandemic, Pune finally took over and became the worst-affected city in Maharashtra.
With Friday’s addition, Pune’s total caseload has risen to more than 5.53 lakh, second only to Delhi’s 6.62 lakh since the outbreak began. What’s more troubling is that the city now has over 70,000 active cases, the largest number of any city in the world.
