Maharashtra is in the beginning of second COVID-19 wave, a central

team report has said, highlighting that there is very limited active

effort to track, test, isolate cases and quarantine contacts, and there

is no adherence to COVID appropriate behaviour among people in rural and

urban areas.

Based on the central team report, Union Health Secretary Rajesh

Bhushan has written a letter to the Maharashtra government, stating

"measures such as night curfews, weekend lockdowns etc. have very

limited impact on containing/suppressing the transmission" and urged the

state to focus on strict containment strategies, strengthening

surveillance and augmenting testing.

In a letter to Maharashtra Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte,

Bhushan said even though the health infrastructure is adequate as of

now, the "state should plan for a worse-case scenario with sufficient

lead time".The central team which visited the state from March 7-11 inferred in

its report that the administrative mechanism should be re-instated to

the level witnessed in August-September 2020 to contain/supress COVID

transmission.

"ln all the districts visited by the central team, the test

positivity rate was high, ranging from 51 per cent in Mumbai to 30 per

cent in Aurangabad, implying that there are lot many cases that are not

being tested and there is high transmission in the community," the

report underlined.