The number of coronavirus cases in Assam rose to 466 on Monday after 74 more people tested positive for the disease, state Health and Family Welfare Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
Fifty-three cases were reported from Golaghat district, six from Kokrajhar, five from Karimganj, four from Dhemaji, two each from Tinsukia and Sivasagar, and one each from Jorhat and Nagaon, he said.
Of the total 466 patients in the state, 57 have recovered, while 402 are undergoing treatment. Four people have died due to the disease and three have migrated out of Assam.
The minister said most of the latest COVID-19 patients are returnees from outside Assam.”It is clarified that all swabs are collected from people soon after they arrive from outstation. Subsequently they are transferred to the quarantine centres. Therefore most of the positive cases in Assam are imported and not home-grown!” he tweeted.
Assam has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases after inter-state movement through road and rail was allowed during the lockdown period.
With domestic flight operations resuming in the country from Monday after a gap of two months, health officials are expecting this spike to be sharper in the coming days.
To screen all the people returning to the state by road and rail networks, the administration has set up five zonal screening camps and similar facilities are already existing in the district headquarters and at local levels.
Kokrajhar has the zonal screening camp for Lower Assam districts, Tezpur for the northern part of the state, Jorhat for Upper Assam, Guwahati for central Assam and Silchar for Barak Valley.
Assam has so far tested 66,444 samples for COVID-19 in seven laboratories in the state and the National Institute of Virology in Pune, the state”s health and family welfare department said in its daily bulletin on Sunday night.
