30 Members of Family Test Positive for Coronavirus After Celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi in Maharashtra

Thirty members of a family have tested positive for coronavirus at Kalyan in Thane district days after they celebrated the Ganesh Chaturthi festival together, a civic official said on Saturday. Members of the family live on different floors of the same building in Joshi Baug area, the official said.

They got together for Ganesh Chaturthi last month in keeping with a 60-year-old family tradition, said Pratibha Panpatil, health officer of the Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation (KDMC). The festival was celebrated from August 22 to 31.

“One of them was later found to have caught the infection, following which the samples of 33 family members were sent for tests. Altogether 30 persons have tested positive,” she told PTI. “They have been hospitalised. All are in stable condition,” the official said.

KDMC public relations officer Madhuri Phophale said 467 new coronavirus cases were recorded on Saturday, taking the overall count to 31,007, while the death toll so far is 671. The mortality rate in the KDMC limits is 2.16 per cent while the recovery rate is 86.09 per cent, she said.