Mumbai,  In a significant decision aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19 contagion, the Maharashtra government has decided to stop all home quarantine in 18 of the worst-hit - or half the state's total - districts where the case positivity rate is higher than the state average, Health Minister Rajesh Tope said here on Tuesday.

The government will not permit any more home isolation in these districts and the infected persons would have to compulsorily go in for institutional quarantine to ensure better health-care facilities and monitoring of the patients.

The districts include a mix of urban and semi-urban ones like Thane, Raigad, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Satara, Kolhapur, Nashik, Ahmednagar, Sangli, Osmanabad, Beed, Latur, Pune, Hingoli, Akola, Amravati, Gadchiroli and Wardha where the Covid positivity ratio reported is far higher than the state average, said Tope.

"In these districts, we shall make available more Covid Care Centres along with isolation facilities where the patients will be kept and treated," said Tope.

Currently, a staggering 27,29,301 people are in home isolation and another 24,932 are in institutional quarantine across the state, though the district-wise data is not immediately available.

A health department official said that while in home quarantine, many people have a tendency to move around or even undertake travel unauthorisedly to different places, posing a severe health hazard to the others, especially now with the threats of Mucormycosis looming over the state.

"We have received many such complaints of people with the 'home quarantine stamp' on their hands found roaming around in public places like malls, markets or restaurants, blatantly violating the norms, and strict action has been taken against them, including shunting them to institutional isolation," said the official, declining to be identified.

On Monday, Relief & Rehabilitation Minister Vijay Wadettiwar had said that these districts - which account for half the state's 36 districts - were showing rising number of cases and are unlikely to get any relaxations in the Covid-19 restrictions currently imposed in the state.

These districts are now in the Red Zone and the curbs are expected to be made even more stringent after June 1, he hinted.

Maharashtra has till date recorded 89,212 Covid-19 fatalities and 56,02,019 positive cases, besides 327,580 'active cases' and 51,82,492 patients have recovered.