Covid surge slows down in Bihar; more than 5,000 dead, 700,000 infected

Till now, 1.59 million people in the age group have received the jabs

Bihar showed significant signs of a

let up in the raging second wave of COVID-19 on Saturday when a substantial drop was registered in the number of people getting infected by the dreaded coronavirus and those succumbing to the contagion.

According to the health department, 48 fresh fatalities caused the death toll to reach 5,052 while 1491 people tested positive since the previous day, raising the tally to 7.04 lakhs.

The state has witnessed more than 600 COVID-19 deaths in the past one week. On many days, the number of dead was close to 100 and sometimes it even breached the three-digit mark.

The number of recovered COVID-19 patients was 6.78 lakhs and the recovery rate has reached 96.29 per cent, a nearly 20 per cent rise since the peak earlier this month when on an average more than 10,000 people were getting infected.

This has also resulted in the active caseload, which was more than one lakh till the beginning of the month, to plunge. The state was left with 21,084 active cases.

More than 1.03 crore people in the state, which has a total population of about 13 crores, have been vaccinated.

Bihar has been doing well in terms of inoculation of those aged between 18 and 44 years, for whom the facility was unrolled less than a year ago.

Till now, 15.95 lakh people in the age group have received the jabs.

State health minister Mangal Pandey disclosed on his twitter handle that Bihars efforts in fighting the pandemic have received a boost with the arrival, by a special Indian Air Force plane, of 90 ventilators along with accessories and 18,000 VTM diagnostic kits.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said in a tweet that the government was aware of the recent spurt in cases of black fungus and necessary arrangements for treating the post-COVID complication were being made at all health care facilities.