Coronavirus: Bihar enters top ten, Kerala reports its highest single-day number till now
The sharp rise in numbers in the last few days has ensured that Bihar is now amongst the top ten states with the maximum caseload of novel Coronavirus in the country. After 380 new cases on Thursday, Bihar reported another 179 on Friday, which took its tally of overall confirmed cases to 2,166.
With that, Bihar moved ahead of Punjab to become the state with the tenth highest caseload. Punjab, incidentally, has slowed down significantly in the last one week, the surge it had seen with a large number of returnees from Nanded in Maharashtra testing positive for the disease seemingly over. On Friday, Punjab reported just one new case. So far, a total of 2,029 people have tested positive in the state.
Bihar, in the meanwhile, has grown at more than 11 per cent (compounded daily growth rate) over the last one week, and its current doubling time is just 6.45 days. The national doubling time for total number of infections is 13.33 days right now.
While more than half of Bihar's numbers have been contributed by people returning from other states, it seems the migrants coming in Delhi, West Bengal and Maharashtra have been specially vulnerable. In fact, amongst the returnees from Delhi who were tested, more than 25 per cent have turned out to be positive. This positivity ratio is more than ten per cent for West Bengal and Maharashtra as well. Among the population that has remained in Bihar, the positivity ratio is less than three per cent, which is broadly in line with trends in other states as well.
Bihar government has now decided that people returning from 11 'high-risk' cities, which include places like Delhi, Surat, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad and Noida, would compulsorily be sent to institutional quarantine. Others, if they are asymptomatic, meaning they do not show any signs of the disease, can be quarantined at home.
On Thursday, more than 6,000 new infections were discovered throughout the country, over 5,000 of which came from just five states — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Gujarat and Rajasthan. The total number of confirmed positive cases in the country is now more than 1.18 lakh. Almost 50,000 of these have now recovered.
A few states with much smaller caseloads have also been reporting relatively high number of cases in the last few days. Assam, Chhattisgarh, and Himachal Pradesh all reported big numbers by their standards. Assam, which has 259 cases now, discovered 56 on Friday, while Chhattigarsh found 44 to take its caseload to 172. Himachal Pradesh had 16 new cases on Friday, and its total now is 168.
Kerala recorded its biggest single-day jump till now, with 42 new cases. The state had been reporting cases in mostly in single digits till the second round of evacuations of Indians stuck in other countries began. That has triggered a fresh wave of infections in Kerala, with several incoming passengers having tested positive. That is the reason why Kerala is among the states that have decided to make 14-day quarantine mandatory for all incoming passengers when the domestic flights begin services from Monday.
Kerala also recorded its fourth Coronavirus-related death on Friday. Kerala has the lowest case-fatality rate amongst states with significant caseloads.
(Inputs and image fom thendianexpress.com)
