According to data released by the Union health ministry on Tuesday, March 16, revealed that 77 per cent of the fresh COVID-19 cases in India in the last 24 hours came from Maharashtra, followed by Punjab and Haryana.
In Maharashtra, the districts of Pune, Nagpur, Mumbai have over 12,000 active coronavirus cases each, contributing the maximum to the active caseload tally of the country. The total tally on Tuesday, March 16, crossed 2.2 lakh.
In the last week of February, India's active caseload was below 1.5 lakh. The health ministry has given a district-wise break-up of the number of active cases.
Pune tops the chart with 24,468 active cases in Maharashtra, followed by Nagpur (18,114), Mumbai (13,309), Thane (12,680) and Nashik (8,035). About 59 per cent of active cases are from Maharashtra.
As on March 11 data according to the health ministry, Pune had 18,474 active cases, while Mumbai had 9,973 and Nagpur had 12,724.
The numbers of active COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra districts portray a sharp spike in a short span of time.
Meanwhile, Punjab which has emerged as a hotspot of COVID-19 infections in the last few weeks has been reporting over 1,000 infections daily. Whereas the state's contribution to India's active case tally is 5.34 per cent, the worst-hit districts are Jalandhar (1,585), SAS Nagar (1,338), Hoshiarpur (1,301), Patiala (1,201) and SBS Nagar (1,173).