Published on April 19, 2020
AHMEDABAD: Gujarat recorded 228 coronavirus positive cases in 12 hours. The tally for the state as on Saturday morning stands at 1,604.
With the new cases, 52 per cent of the state’s cases have been recorded in past three-and-a-half-day.
The state also reported five more deaths in the same period, taking the death toll to 58.
Jayanti Ravi, principal secretary (health & family welfare), said that out of total new cases, 140 are from Ahmedabad, Surat 67, Vadodara 8, Rajkot 5, 2 from Banaskantha and Bhavnagar each and one each from Anand, Botad, Chhota Udepur and Mehsana.
“The new cases recorded from areas such as Naroda, Jamalpur, Behrampura, Relief Road, Teen Darwaja, Jivraj Park, Danilimda, Maninagar, Meghaninagar, Dudhdeshwar and Juhapura in Ahmedabad and Palanpur Patiya, Limbayat, Salabatpura, Pandesara, Man Darwaja, Varacha, Kalod, Sarthana and Umarwada in Surat,” said Ravi.
She, however, said that the state is doing comparatively well. “The state has so far recorded 19.3 cases per million (10 lakh) population. Compared to that, Delhi has 91.1 cases per million, Maharashtra 28.7, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh 20.3,” said the principal secretary.
She added that Gujarat has ramped up testing aggressively. “Compared to national average of 269 tests per million, we are conducting 447.8. More tests would result in identification of positive cases quickly,” said Ravi.
State health department officials said that in the past 24 hours, out of 3,598 tests conducted, 352 turned out to be positive.
Cumulatively, the state has carried out 28,212 tests. Ravi mentioned that on Saturday, Gujarat accounted for eight per cent of the total Covid-19 tests conducted in India.
Out of five deaths recorded in past 12 hours, four were from SVP Hospital in Ahmedabad and one from Surat’s Mission Hospital. Three of the deceased were women and two were men. Ravi said that a 78-year-old woman at SVP Hospital had kidney disease while a 43-year-old woman in Ahmedabad had diabetes. “A 56-year-old man from Ahmedabad had co-morbidity in form of diabetes and hypertension whereas a 56-year-old woman from Surat was patient of hypertension,” she said.
Ahmedabad, one of the national Covid-19 hotspots, crossed 1,000 cases mark on Saturday morning with 1,002 cases. The district now accounts for 62.5 per cent of the total cases registered in Gujarat. Ravi said that out of the 140 new cases from the city, only 15 had symptoms of the viral infection. “Thus, we are stressing on the intensive testing in cluster areas with high concentration of positive cases to identify the cases quickly,” she said.
From Saturday onwards, several parts of Gujarat have started rapid antibody testing (RAT) to identify positive cases – especially in urban areas.
As on Sunday morning, Gujarat has 1,452 patients under hospitalization. The state health department officials said that out of the total, nine are on ventilator and can be considered critical. Gujarat has so far recorded 94 patients of Covid-19 discharged after completion of treatment with a 33-year-old patient from Sabarkantha discharged on Sunday morning.
Parth Shastri Archive 