Gujarat’s tally of COVID-19 infection cases has jumped to 650 with 78 new cases recorded on Tuesday. The death toll rose to 28 with two more deaths Vadodara and Bhavnagar.

So far 59 patients including 11 on Tuesday have been discharged from the hospitals after treatment. As per the State Health Department’s data, 555 patients are under treatment and stable while eight are said to be critical and on ventilator support.

In Gujarat, so far 15,984 samples have been tested, of which 650 have tested positive and remaining 15,334 tested negative.

Ahmedabad has the largest number of cases with more than a dozen infection hotspots in the city where so far 14 people have already died and 373 have found infected.

Complete lockdown

To control the spread of virus in the city, the State government has decided to bring enter walled city area and Danilimda under strict curfew from Wednesday to April 21.

During the curfew period, only women will be allowed to go out for buying essentials like grocery, milk and vegetables bteween 12noon and 4 p.m.

No men or children will be allowed to leave their homes.

The decision to impose curfew as a special measure to enforce lockdown more forcefully was taken after Chief Minister Vijay Rupani held a review meeting in which Congress party legislators representing those hotspots were also invited to seek their cooperation.

“It is necessary to enforce the lockdown completely in those pockets in the city,” CM said in the meeting.

Earlier, the civic body had declared the walled city area as a buffer zone and had hardened lockdown measures by completely regulating entry and exit in those parts from where large number of cases have been recorded, triggering fears of community spread of the viral disease.