Six more people succumbed to COVID19 in J&K on Saturday, taking the death toll to 1,430, while 577 persons tested positive for the disease, taking total cases to 91,329.
A health official said one of the highest number of COVID tests were carried out in J&K today. As per official data, 27739 samples were tested in 24 hours preceding Saturday afternoon.
The official said most of these samples were tested using Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) kits. The official said more than 10,000 samples from Kashmir division were tested between Friday and Saturday, using RAT.
The official data showed that 6,01,708 samples had been tested in Kashmir using RAT. Of these, 5,75,397 tested negative, while remaining 26,311 tested positive. The positive percentage of RAT samples in Kashmir has been 4.3. However, many doctors have urged that use of RAT in testing symptomatic people be minimized as there was a high probability of false negative using this testing method.
“The infected then get a false sense of being uninfected and end up risking their lives and that of their contacts,” said a senior doctor working at SKIMS.
As per the data the COVID19 claimed six lives in 24 hours in J&K, three each from Jammu and Kashmir divisions.
In Kashmir, the deceased were aged over 65 years, a 67-year-old man from Karan Nagar Srinagar, a 75-year-old man from Zakura Srinagar and another 75-year-old man from Verinag in Anantnag.
There was a mild drop in the positive percentage of samples tested today. The data showed that 2.03 percent of the total samples tested were found positive. Of the 577 new cases, 364 were from Kashmir and 213 were from Jammu.
Meanwhile, the number of active cases dropped marginally and reached 7,680. The drop in active cases, another heath official said, has been minimal in the past three weeks. He said although a number of patients have recovered, however, the steady rise in cases has been impeding any substantial drop in active cases.
There was a wide gap in the number of active cases between Jammu and Kashmir. In Kashmir, 5,233 patients were recovering from COVID while the number stood at 2477 in Jammu.
The district-wise cases recorded in Kashmir today were: 130 in Srinagar, 50 in Budgam, 47 in Baramulla, 45 in Kupwara 45, 27 in Anantnag, 23 in Bandipora, 12 each in Ganderbal and Pulwama 12, 11 in Kulgam and six in Shopian. In Jammu district, 116 people were confirmed to be infected with COVID19, besides 21 travelers who arrived in Kashmir and nine travelers who arrived in Jammu were among the positive cases.