Three residents of Srinagar district were among the six people to succumb of COVID19 in J&K on Friday, taking the death toll to 1523 while the case tally reached 97,805 with 581 fresh positives.
Srinagar district’s fatalities reached 373 when three persons lost their life after they were confirmed to be coronavirus positive.
These included a 65-year-old woman of Lal Bazaar who was admitted at SKIMS, Soura; a 78-year-old man from Naseem Bagh, Srinagar who lost his life at SKIMS, Soura; an 84-year-old woman from Natipora, Srinagar who died at SMHS Hospital and a 90-year-old woman from Batwina, Ganderbal who passed away at SKIMS Soura.
Two persons were reported to have died in Jammu division.
On Friday, 581 coronavirus positive cases were confirmed in J&K including 353 from Kashmir division and 192 from Jammu division.
The official bulletin on COVID19 situation in J&K said that 24,948 tests were carried out in J&K between Thursday and Friday and the positive percentage of samples tested today stood at 2.3 percent, consistent with the positive percentage recorded over the past three weeks.
The overall percentage of samples that have tested positive in J&K is 4 percent.
Till date 24,39,196 samples have been tested here.
A total of 632 people recovered from COVID19 today, the official bulletin said, taking the recoveries to 90,537.
The recovery rate reached 92.57 percent today.
Currently, 5745 patients of the viral infection are active, 4188 in Kashmir and 1577 in Jammu division.
Presently, 554 patients infected with SARS-CoV2 were admitted across hospitals of J&K, 372 of them on high-flow oxygen support.
Of these 430 patients were in hospitals of Kashmir division and 33 patients, as per the official data, were in critical care units of the hospitals.
Baramulla today overtook district Budgam in terms of total cases reported.
With 6407 cases, the district became the third-highest affected district by COVID19 after Srinagar and Jammu in terms of absolute numbers.
The district tally on Friday was: Srinagar 169, Baramulla 58, Kupwara 37, Budgam 29, Ganderbal 20, Pulwama 13, Anantnag 12, Bandipora nine, Shopian four and Kulgam two.
District Jammu reported 92 cases, the total in the district now 18,197.
The number of cases reported per day in J&K has not been increasing over the past month.
However, many doctors have cautioned against the complacency that they see as a contributing factor to casualties.
“Deaths are a concern and it is because of the carelessness in following SOPs that the vulnerable population is falling to infection,” said Dr Naveed Nazir Shah, Head of the Department of Pulmonary Medicine at Government Medical College, Srinagar.
He said wearing masks and using hand hygiene was an important preventive measure and needed to be followed.