Coronavirus News LIVE Updates: Maharashtra Tops List as 85% of New Covid-19 Cases Seen in 6 States; US Approaches 100mn Vaccinations

Coronavirus News LIVE Updates: After reporting more than 10,000 fresh coronavirus positive cases on two days in a row, Maharashtra on Sunday added 11,141 new infections, taking the tally to 22,19,727 while 38 deaths pushed the toll to 52,478, the state Health department said. On Friday and Saturday, the state reported 10,216 and 10,187 cases, respectively. Owing to rising cases, authorities have announced partial lockdown in Aurangabad from March 11 and full lockdown on weekends. Malls and weekly markets will be shut, weddings and public functions disallowed and restaurants will have to be shut at 9 pm, according to official reports.

The district is currently under partial lockdown and a night curfew is imposed from 11 pm to 6 am. The restrictions are set to end on March 8. Aurangabad has a tally of 52,103 infections while the death toll stands at 1,284. On Friday, the district added 459 cases to its cumulative total. Mumbai city reported 1,361 fresh cases during the day while Mumbai division, including Mumbai and satellite cities, added 2,493 new infections. Mumbai city’s case tally reached 3,35,569 while the overall death toll rose by four to 11,504, the department added.

Meanwhile, the US is approaching Joe Biden’s target of 100m vaccinations in his first 100 days in office United States, with 90,351,750 doses of Covid-19 vaccines as of Sunday morning, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The vaccine doses are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines. The agency said 58,873,710 people had received one or more doses while 30,686,881 people have received the second dose as of Sunday. A total of 7,389,102 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the CDC.

The figures emerged as Dr Anthony Fauci warned it is too early to end Covid-19 restrictions, despite Texas and Mississippi having lifted mask mandates and business capacity limits this week. States are easing restrictions after a drop in cases, though that decline is starting to plateau at a high rate of 60,000 to 70,000 infections a day. “We’re going in the right direction but we just need to hang on a bit longer,” Fauci said on Sunday, to CBS’s Face the Nation.

Fauci, chief medical adviser to Joe Biden, said turning restrictions “on and off” risked another surge. “This is not going to be indefinite, we need to gradually pull back as we get people vaccinated,” he said.

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