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Updated: Apr 26, 2020 21:25 IST

The tally of Covid-19 patients in Maharashtra has gone up to 8,068 with 440 new cases, a state health official said Sunday. Countrywide, the number of Covid-19 cases climbed to 26,917.

Nineteen fatalities on Sunday took number of casualties to 342. Out of the 19 deaths, 12 were in Mumbai.

So far, 1,188 patients across the state have been discharged after recovery, the official said.

Maharashtra continues to be the state with the highest number of Covid-19 infections.

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In the last 24 hours, Mumbai recorded 358 new cases. The city now has a total of 5,407 cases of Covid-19. It has recorded a total of 204 deaths.

Pune recorded 72 new cases of Covid-19 on Sunday to take its total to 1,139.

Maharashtra has so far carried out 116,345 tests to detect coronavirus. In the last 24 hours, authorities conducted 7.373 tests.

The state has been grappling to cap surging numbers of Covid-19 despite a stringent lockdown in place. Mumbai’s sprawling slums where more than half of the city’s 12 million population live, are posing a huge challenge to check the spread of infections.

Mumbai is home to as Asia’s largest slum Dharavi which has now emerged as a Covid-19 hotspot. Dharavi which measures 2.4 sq km, has more than one million people. Most of them live in cramped dwellings where hardly anybody can practice social distancing.