Maharashtra, especially Mumbai is battling hard to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. But since the Metropolis is always facing different crises along with security issues, the economic capital of the country is upgrading itself with the help of technology and getting ready to face the crisis in the future.

Reports said that considering the hardships faced by the COVID-19 patients in the allotment of beds in the hospitals, the Bruhan Mumbai Municipal Corporation BMC has established a Decentralized Hospital Bed Management system and made it operational in all the 24 wards. Earlier the patient used to get the information with a single helpline number about the availability of the beds but with the new facility, they can avail the information from each ward which will be faster and easier.

Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh inaugurated Segway electric scooters for police personnel at Marine Drive in south Mumbai. While fifty of these two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transporters' will be deployed in south Mumbai, they will be also introduced for cops in suburban Bandra, Juhu and Versova areas. The police personnel manning Segways will have a public address system attached to their masks and they will also monitor social distancing.

A state of art Integrated Flood Warning system for Mumbai will be jointly launched by Union Minister for Earth Sciences, Dr. Harsh Vardhan and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray today. In a bid to prevent or at least mitigate flooding in the megapolis, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai had approached the Ministry of Earth Sciences to develop the warning system.

Meanwhile, India now stands at the fourth position after crossing UK as the COVID-19 worst hit nation , only behind the US (20,76,495 cases), Brazil (7,87,489) and Russia (5,02,436), as per Worldometer figures.

According to the Union Health Ministry data, which was updated at 8 am, the country saw the highest single-day spike of 357 deaths and 9,996 cases on Thursday, increasing the death-toll to 8,102 and the nationwide tally to 2,86,579.

The number of active cases stands at 1,37,448 as on Thursday at 8 am, while 1,41,028 people have recovered from the disease including foreigners and one patient has migrated, the health ministry said. This is for a second consecutive day that the no. of recovered cases is more than the active cases.

Maharashtra has recorder the highest number of confirmed cases in the country which is at 94,041 and currently stands at the top of the tally.

Responding to a question about the possibility of community transmission in India, Director General of the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) dismissed any such claims on Thursday and said during the Government of India's COVID briefing, "India is not in community transmission and I would like to emphasise it. India is not in community transmission and that's only a term which is used but we have to continue with the strategy of testing, tracing, tracking, and quarantine and continue with the containment measures as we have found success until now."