Bihar reported its highest single day spike in six months on Wednesday when 1,659 people tested positive for Coronavirus causing the active caseload to shoot up to the 3,697 mark, an official said.
The number of fresh cases is nearly twice as much as a day ago. Patna district is bearing the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic now sweeping the state, accounting for 1,015 of the fresh cases and 2,283 of the active ones. A 65 years old COVID19 patient also died on Wednesday. According to Mukul Kumar Singh, COVID nodal officer at the NMCH hospital here, the resident of Bskhtiyarpur breathed his last a day after being admitted on Tuesday.
The number of patients recovering, in the last 24 hours, across the state is 184 though a high positivity rate has caused the recovery rate to fall below 98 percent. Pratyay Amrit, the Additional Chief Secretary for departments of health and disaster management, told reporters that only 63 COVID patients were hospitalized while the remaining were in home isolation.
"A low rate of hospitalization, so far, is no reason for complacency. The elderly continue to be more vulnerable. An 85-year-old lady admitted to AIIMS, Patna has been put on ventilator", he said. Amrit said the low hospitalization rate could be because of a large number of people having taken vaccines "which may not protect fully against the contagion but serve as a bulwark against severity of infection".
The Additional Chief Secretary also urged the people to get their wards vaccinated and disclosed that since Monday 4.5 lakh minors have got the jabs in the state. Amrit was also asked about the number of Omicron cases in the state, which has so far reported only one confirmed case of the new rapidly spreading variant.
"Our first genome sequencing facility became operational two days ago. It takes nearly a week for the reports to come. The general behavior of the contagion as of now suggests that the current spike is largely due to Omicron though there may also be some cases of Delta and Delta plus variants", he said. Meanwhile, the state government undertook yet another drastic revision of the death toll, confirming 13,786 fatalities.
The figure was shared by Special Secretary Upendra Nath Pandey after a meeting of the state cabinet. He attributed the rise in death toll to "1699 fresh applications" received from those who have lost a family member to the corona virus and were eligible for compensation from the state government.
The state government had last year decided to give ex-gratia of Rs 4 lakh to the next of the kin of each deceased while another Rs 50,000 will be paid to every beneficiary "in accordance with a direction from the Union Home Ministry", said Pandey. To this end, release of Rs 125 crore from the Bihar Contingency Fund was approved by the state cabinet.
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