COVID19 claimed 11 lives in J&K during the past 24 hours while 434 people tested positive on Friday. The viral infection has 363 people severely sick currently of which 14 are on ventilator.
A senior doctor working at SKIMS Soura said that the majority of COVID19 cases were asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. He said currently, nearly 5000 people in J&K were ‘officially’ active cases, recovering from infection.
“These are the people who were tested, due to symptoms or incidentally and found positive for SARS-CoV2 infection,” the doctor said. “There are hundreds of others who may be infected but haven’t been tested. We are mostly looking at mildly symptomatic cases in our daily feed of cases.”
Of the 4849 active cases, as per the media bulletin issued by J&K government, 363 are in hospitals ‘on oxygen support’. The doctor said that these patients have severe symptoms of the viral illness and are admitted for treatment, primarily high-flow oxygen. In Jammu division, where 2298 cases are listed as active, 102 patients are on oxygen support. In Kashmir division, the number of active cases was stated to be 2551 on Friday. The official data stated that 261 patients of COVID19 were on oxygen support in Kashmir division. A majority of these patients are admitted at SMHS Hospital followed by SKIMS, Soura.
The doctors said that the flow of the new cases had been steady over the past weeks. On Friday, Kashmir division had 232 new cases and Jammu 202. The cumulative case tally over the past nine months reached 1,15,207 in J&K with the 434 cases of Friday.
The major caseload was from the twin capital cities of Jammu (101) and Srinagar (98). In Kashmir, Budgam district had 36 new cases on Friday, Kupwara 25, Baramulla 19 and Pulwama 17. The cumulative cases is highest in Srinagar district till date, from where 24,072 cases have been confirmed.
District Shopian and Kulgam have been recording the lowest increase in new cases in Kashmir division over the past two weeks. Kulgam’s active cases are 66 whereas Shopian has 87 active cases.
With 11 more casualties, the death toll attributed to the pandemic here reached 1786, 1.5 percent of the total cases reported. Seven casualties were reported from Jammu division and four from Kashmir division.