MUMBAI, Jan 3: The Maharashtra Government is proposing to introduce lockdown anytime now as the covid cases have shot up alarmingly in the past few days. Ten Ministers tested covid positive, so also 20 MLAs, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar confirmed on Saturday.

Pawar said the Government is keeping a tab on the increasing number of cases. "If the number of patients continues to rise then there will be strict restrictions. To avoid strict restrictions everybody should follow norms."

There has been a sharp rise in new cases in the last 15 days. The Government has imposed a limit on gatherings in the open or closed spaces at 50. The State reported 9,170 cases on Saturday. On Friday there were 8,067 new cases and eight deaths. On Thursday the cases were 5,368 with 22 deaths. The total number of cases so far stands at 66,87,991 and the death toll at 1,41,533. And the Omicron covid cases among them have reached a total of 460. The Test Positivity Rate (TPR) is 2.11%.

Mumbai on Friday reported 5,631 new Covid-19 cases, almost 2,000 more than Thursday, which took the caseload in the city on the last day of the year to 7,85,110, a civic official had said. This was a rise of 53 per cent over 3,671 cases recorded on Thursday.

The Covid-19 positivity rate in Pune city touched 5.9 per cent on Friday after 412 cases were detected, raising the tally within civic limits to 5,10,218, as per officials.

Meanwhile, Bengal closed all schools and colleges till further orders. The TPR was 12.02%. It has banned flights from Delhi and Mumbai. So also Tamil Nadu and a few other States like Odisha and Haryana have closed schools and imposed other restrictions like curfew.

Kerala on Monday reported 29 fresh cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus. So far 181 Omicron cases.

India reported 1,700 Omicron cases till Sunday, according to the Health Ministry. These were detected in 23 States. Maharashtra has recorded the maximum number of 510 cases, Delhi 351, Kerala 156), Gujarat 136, Tamil Nadu 121 and Rajasthan 120. Total covid cases so far in India is 3,49,22,882 with 33,750 new cases. The casualties on Sunday were 123, taking the tally to 4,81,893. The Test Positivity Rate (TPR) was 3.84 %, the weekly average being 1.68 %.