Health workers wearing protective gear scan visitors at the entrance of a hospital in the wake of coronavirus outbreak, in Srinagar. | Photo Credit: PTI
Jammu- Five more persons including four from Valley tested positive for COVID-19 in Jammu and Kashmir on Friday, taking the total number of cases across the Union Territory to 75, officials said.
Among the four fresh cases detected in Valley today is a man, who had fled from SMHS hospital after doctors took his swab for examination, reports said. The 38-year-old resident of Chattabal, declared as ‘red zone’ by the officials, was brought back to the hospital by police after his test report came positive to Covid-19. He was later sent to Chest Diseases hospital for treatment.
“He had mentioned his name wrongly in the hospital registry,” news agency GNS quoted a doctor as saying.
The second case from this capital city is a resident of Eidgah. He had come into contact with a minor boy who had tested positive to Covid-19 early this week.
Other two people, both teachers are residents of border town Uri in Baramulla district. They are said to have contracted the virus from a coronavirus patient from Samba region of Jammu.
Meanwhile, government spokesperson Rohit Kansal in a news conference held at Jammu said that the number of positive cases in the Union Territory have reached 75.
“As we speak, we have a total of 75 positive cases in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. These include five new cases that have been reported positive today. Four of these cases are from Kashmir division and one is from Jammu,” he said.
Kansal was flanked by Director National Health Mission (NHM), Bhupinder Kumar and Director Information Syed Sehrish Asgar.
The government spokesman said that the Kashmir cases were known contacts of previous positive cases while contact tracing of Jammu case was being done.
“Out of the total 75 cases that we have, 70 cases are active. As you are aware, there are two cases which have been released in Jammu and one case released in Kashmir. And we have had two unfortunate deaths. So that leaves us with 70 active cases,” Kansal said
“We are expecting one more case in Jammu to be released. Out of the 70 active cases, 54 are in Kashmir and 16 in Jammu division,” he added.
Kansal said that J&K has also been testing cases aggressively and so far 1218 tests have been conducted which is 6.5% of total under surveillance.
The government spokesperson said that nearly 2000 contacts of positive cases have been identified of which 975 have been traced and tested. He reassured that all the identified contacts will be traced and tested for Covid-19.
“We plan to test every single one of the 2000 contacts that we have identified.”
Kansal said that in all 34 hotspots/red zones have been identified in J&K of which 24 are in Kashmir Division and 10 in Jammu Division. These include 7 in Pulwama, 4 in Bandipora, 4 in Budgam, 5 in Srinagar, 2 in Shopian, 1 each in Ganderbal and Baramulla in Kashmir Division. 4 in Jammu district, 5 in Rajouri and 1 in Udhampur district of Jammu Division.
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