Published on March 31, 2020
AHMEDABAD: In past 12 hours, Gujarat added three more Covid-19 patients – one each from Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and Rajkot, said state health & family welfare department officials.
With the new cases, the state’s positive patient tally has reached to 73. The figure includes six deaths and five persons who have got discharged after completing their treatment. A woman from Ahmedabad got discharged on Tuesday morning, said officials.
As on Tuesday morning, Ahmedabad district has 24 positive cases, followed by 10 each in Gandhinagar and Rajkot, 9 each in Surat and Vadodara, 6 in Bhavnagar, 2 in Gir Somnath and one each in Kutch, Mehsana and Porbandar.
Jayanti Ravi, principal secretary (health & family welfare), told media that the new cases include a 32-year-old woman from Khoraj in Gandhinagar district, a 55-year-old man from Ahmedabad and a 28-year-old man from Rajkot. “The woman from Khoraj had got the infection from her husband, who is already declared positive. Other two cases are also of local transmission. We are tracing all their contacts,” she said.
With the new cases, the state now has 51% of the cases of local transmission, surpassing 44% of foreign travel and 5% of domestic travel.
“Out of the patients under treatment, only two are on ventilator. All are responding well to the treatment. It’s considered that the Covid-19 infection is more severe for the elderly – but I am glad to tell you that out of five discharged, three are 60-plus. These include a 61-year-old man, a 66-year old man and a 62-year-old woman – all from Ahmedabad,” said Ravi.
State health department officials said that a total of 19,026 persons are under quarantine including 18,078 at home, 741 in government facilities and 207 in private facilities.
With 33% or one third of total cases of Gujarat, Ahmedabad is already put under ‘hotspot’ category by the central government to fight Covid-19 spread. “Apart from the city, we have proactively started work in cities such as Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot and even Bhavnagar where it’s found that the infection has spread in clusters,” said Ravi. She had earlier mentioned that there would be isolation and buffer zones in the areas within the cities from where high number of positive cases have been reported.
Gujarat has so far processed 1396 samples out of which 73 are positive, 1322 are negative and result for one is pending. Ravi said that under integrated disease surveillance programme (IDSP) model, the health workers have surveyed 6.15 crore in Gujarat out of which 17,665 persons with international and 76,101 with domestic travel history were identified. Out of the total, 251 were found to have any signs associated with Covid-19 infection and were provided treatment and put under quarantine.
Answering a question on two floors at Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC)-run SVP Hospital being converted into Covid-19 zones, Ravi said that the proposal is still under consideration and new patients are likely to be shifted to the 1200-bed specialized hospital at Civil Hospital campus.
“We have already given a proposal for a testing lab at SVP Hospital and we are hopeful of getting it in a couple of days,” she said.
Ravi, answering a question about dearth of masks and basic necessities for the doctors treating Covid-19 patients, said that Gujarat has adequate equipment for the purpose. “We have about 31 lakh triple-layer masks today. In addition, we have procured two lakh N-95 masks and 9,500 personal protection equipment (PPE) kits recently,” she said.
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