Mumbai, April 14 (IANS): Covid-19 claimed 18 patients in Maharashtra, taking the state total figure of casualties from 160 on Monday to 178, state health officials said here on Tuesday.

The number of new cases recorded in the state decreased by a fraction from 352 on Monday to 350 today, taking the state total to 2,684.

These include 204 new cases from Mumbai, comprising Dharavi's 6 fresh cases, with 781 cases in the city detected due to contact tracing, containment measures, fever clinics, etc, said an official.

Mumbai recorded 11 deaths, 4 in Mumbai region, and one each in Ahmednagar and Aurangabad.

Of the total victims 12 were men and 6 were females, and 13 among them suffered from various other serious ailments like heart problems, diabetes, hypertension and asthma.

On the positive side, 259 patients who recovered fully have been discharged all over the state.

Among those who attended the Tablighi Jamaat event in Delhi, 755 have been tested so far and 50 are detected positive, besides 6 of their contacts, from all over the state.

As many as 67,701 people are in home quarantine while another 5,687 are in institutional isolation as part of the plans to contain the spread of Covid-19.

Implementing the cluster containment plans further, a total of 5,059 teams have fanned around the state and surveyed over 1.83 million population till now.

aharashtra was massively jolted when over 3,000-strong crowds of migrants thronged Bandra, demanding transport facilities to return to their native places.

After a mild caning to control them, the Mumbai Police managed to disperse them even as the development made a mockery of the 'social distancing' policy, violated the prohibitory orders clamped around the state and kicked off a big political row.

As the Covind-19 situation continued to rattle the state health authorities, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray announced the constitution of a special aCovid-19 Task Force' comprising leading doctors who will advise the state government on ways and means to tackle the raging pandemic.

The medicos - who are specialists in various fields - include the panel Chairman Sanjay Oak, and other members are S. Nagaonkar, Zarir Udwadia, Kedar Toraskar, Rahul Pandit, N. D. Karnik, Zaheer Virani, Pravin Bangar, and Om Shrivastava.

The Covid-19 Task Force will strategize and plan for the pandemic protocols, besides giving expert guidance through a hotline, especially since many of the victims have succumbed to coronavirus with comorbidities.