Assam to close inter-state borders for road travel as Covid-19 cases surge

GUWAHATI: Assam is contemplating to re-seal the inter-state borders from June 2 to check further flow of home-bound people by road as the state’s Covid-19 count surged towards the 400th mark after 32 fresh cases were added to overnight tally of 346, which has taken the total number of cases to 378 on Sunday.
State health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “In last three days our Covid-19 positive cases have dramatically increased. We are thinking of sealing the inter-state borders again from next month. The domestic air travel is resuming and there will be more frequent running of trains and so there is no need of people to incur higher amounts to hire vehicles and come by road.”
He said that because of the daily spikes in cases, our recovery rate has come down to 16.19%. On the other hand the global recovery rate has also dramatically improved to 43.53% and India’s to 41%.” On April 4, when there were 42 cases and 29 recoveries in the state, the rate of recovery rate in Assam was as high as 69% compared to India’s 26.88% and world’s 31.30%.
The abrupt rise in cases in the state is fuelled by arrival of the state’s citizens from other state outside the region in thousands.
“From May 5 when inter-state movement was allowed by ministry of home affairs over 60,000 people have reached the state till Sunday and among them 291 have tested positive,” Sarma said.
“But, the silver lining is that all of them were in quarantine when their tests results came and so the virus imported from other states have not gone into the community here,” he added. Among these people having travel history and testing positive, majority of them have come from three states—108 from Maharshtra, 33 from West Bengal, 30 from Tamil Nadu, according to the health department’s records.
Sarma said, “Assam is adequately prepared to serve 5000 patients at a time, not just in number of hospital beds but in terms of number of doctors, nurses, lab technicians, cleaners and every other health worker.”
As on Sunday the 314 active cases are under treatment at various dedicated Covid-19 hospitals across the state.