Srinagar: Four people succumbed to COVID19 in J&K today, the highest single day toll in the past four weeks. The case tally also shot up beyond 700 mark and rested at 703 today.
In a major concern, on Monday, the number of active cases in J&K crossed 4000. With 4024 active cases, over 2600 of these detected in the past six days only, the UT is under a steeply rising COVID19 wave. A health official said that the number of cases has been rising dramatically especially in the Jammu division. He said that currently a very small number of those found positive were hospitalised but the number was going up every day.
“Very soon, we may have a stress situation in hospitals,” he said. The official said in the past week, the number of patients on hospital beds has doubled.
Director General Health, Family Welfare and Immunization Dr Saleem ur Rehman who is also in-charge Director Health Services Jammu said the current rate of hospitalization was 3.5 percent in Jammu. “We have hundreds of vacant beds and are creating new improved strategies to deal with any eventuality,” he said.
The number of tests carried out in the past 24 hours, as per the official bulletin, was 46857. A drop of over 10,000 tests in the UT resulted in a lower number of cases than could have been detected if the tests were over 55,000 as the norm has been in the past one week. The positive percentage of samples today was 1.5, slightly higher than the positive percentage of Sunday and Saturday.
The 703 cases today were the highest in the past six months. After a gap of six days the number of cases in Kashmir division were higher than the number of cases detected in Jammu division. Jammu had 345 people testing positive today while 361 cases were detected in Kashmir division. Districts of Jammu, Srinagar, Baramulla, Budgam, Reasi and many others had an increase in their COVID19 cases. The bulletin put the case figures as: Baramulla 64, Budgam 45, Pulwama 14, Kupwara 18, Anantnag 14, Bandipora 11, Ganderbal 4, Kulgam 19, Shopian 0.
The number of casualties attributed to SARS-CoV2 today was four, the highest since 15 December 2020. Of the deceased, three were from Jammu division and one from Kashmir division. The death toll of COVID19 till Monday was 4544. The pace of vaccination was increased today and 92518 doses of the vaccine were administered in 24 hours.