281 more test Covid-19 positive in Bihar, active caseload is 749

COVID-19 cases continued to spiral in Bihar on Friday when 281 more people tested positive for the virus, pushing the active caseload to 749, the state health department said.

The state had recorded 158 new cases on Friday.

Patna (136) and East Champaran (70) districts accounted for a major chunk of the fresh cases on Saturday, the department said.

No fatality due to the disease has been reported in the last 72 hours and the death toll remained unchanged at 12,096.

A rapid rise in the number of fresh cases has been seen in the past one week during which the active caseload has shot up by more than nine times.

However, the recovery rate is 98.23 per cent.

Altogether 20 patients recovered from the disease in the past 24 hours taking the total number of cured people to 7,14,331. The state's tally is now 7,27,177.

According to Sanjeev Kumar, the nodal officer at AIIMS, Patna, two of its faculty members, one of them recently back from Andaman and Nicobar Islands, are among those who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The health department said altogether 1,62,459 samples were tested for coronavirus in the last 24 hours. The state has so far accounted for one confirmed case of the Omicron variant.