Gujarat reported 76 fresh confirmed coronavirus cases on Thursday, the highest in the past 24 hours, taking the total figure to 262 in the state, with 50% of them having detected in Ahmedabad city alone which is also one of the top ten hotspots in the country. Among the new patients are children as young as two years old to adults as old as 92 years.
According to data released by the state health department Thursday evening, out of 76 cases, Ahmedabad reported 58 cases and a majority of them were detected from the residential societies which are already under cluster quarantine and have been sealed by the civic bodies. The fresh cases increased the total number of infected persons in Ahmedabad to 142, of which six have died. The total death toll in the state has also gone up to 17.
Principal Secretary, Health, Jayanti Ravi said "there is nothing to worry as the spike in the number of cases are a result of intense checking at hotspots of infection spread which we have identified and therefore, we believe that more cases will be detected in next one week. The situation is under control."
She also claimed that the rise in the cases are also linked to Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi. "We are identifying each one of them and their contacts and are being tested," she added. The worst affected areas in Ahmedabad are located in walled city which are densely populated. The maximum cases on Thursday was reported from four residential societies which are closely located.
Later in the day, municipal commissioner Vijay Nehra told reporters, "All cases were proactively detected by health teams as part of our strategy of intense surveillance and aggressive testing. We are chasing the virus." In a tweet, he also alleged that lot of people who were found infected were refusing to get admitted.
On the other hand, in the past 24 hours, 1975 samples were collected, out of which 76 were found positive and result of 318 are still pending, the rest of them were negative. In Surat, three cases have been detected in which infected persons are said to be asymptomatic which has left the administration baffled. The other hotspots in the state are in Surat, Vadodara, Bhavnagar and Patan districts.
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