Maharashtra FDA chief meets Covid drug producers to ensure availability as cases spike

In its efforts to boost the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, Maharashtra's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) director met heads of the companies producing life-saving drugs like Remedesivir and Tocilizumab to ensure more production and availability in the state. The FDA director's move comes amid worsening situation of COVID in Maharashtra as the state reported a single-day highest spike of 8139 cases on Saturday. The meeting between the FDA director and the companies was to ensure the production and availability of life-saving medicines in the state as it faces a steep battle against COVID-19. 

State FDA Minister Rajendra Shingane met several chemist associations and visited their shops to ensure there were no attempts to run a black market for these life-saving COVID-related drugs. Discussions about the availability of medicines in the future, its production in the state. The Maharashtra government recently announced that it was going to buy these COVID-related drugs in a large scale to fight the worsening situation in the state.    

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Maharashtra's COVID tally

The death toll due to Coronavirus breached 10,000 in Maharashtra on Saturday while cases jumped by a record 8,139 to reach 2,46,600, data from the state health department stated. The death toll now stands at 10,116. In the last 24 hours, 4,360 COVID-19 patients recovered from the respiratory illness, taking the total to 1,36,985. As of July 11, there are 99,202 active cases in Maharashtra. In the state capital Mumbai, 1,284 people were diagnosed with COVID-19 on Saturday, taking the aggregate to 91,745. Meanwhile, the tally in neighbouring Thane district touched 59,487, while that in Palghar stood at 9,343. Pune so far has 37,356 cases while Nagpur has recorded 1,957 cases.

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The state health department said the recovery rate in Maharashtra is 55.55% while the case fatality rate is 4.1%. Currently, 6,80,017 people are under home quarantine and 47,376 people in institutional quarantine. Furthermore, out of 12,85,991 laboratory samples, 2,46,600 have been tested positive (19.17%) for COVID-19 until July 11. Earlier in the day, Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray said that Dharavi slum in Mumbai has emerged as a global role model for containing the spread of novel coronavirus in the backdrop of the WHO's praise.

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