City reports 25 new cases, 16 discharged from hospital

Varanasi: With 25 new cases, the Covid-19 positive cases tally in Varanasi reached 652 on Monday.
Detection of 21 cases, including nine prisoners and eight staffers of the district jail in Sonbhadra in a single day, set alarm bells ringing in the administration as increase in number of cases has been slow here as compared to other districts surrounding Varanasi.
District magistrate Varanasi Kaushal Raj Sharma confirmed that 25 new cases of Covid-19 positive came to light in the district with the arrival of lab test reports. It took the tally of positive cases in the district to 652. With the discharging of 16 patients from different hospitals of district, the total number of cured patients is 364 while 23 had died, he said adding now active cases in the district are 265.
He further informed TOI that 11 new areas of the district were declared hotspots after which total figure of hotspots in the district is 311. Test report of 1,045 samples is awaited, he added.
In Sonbhadra, where total number of positive cases was only 51 till Sunday, a sharp jump was noticed on Monday with the arrival of lab test reports. Chief medical officer Dr SK Upadhyaya said that 21 new infected persons came to light on Monday, which is highest figure of cases recorded in a single day in the district.
More alarming was to see that 17 of them had come to light from district jail. Upadhyaya said that nine prisoners and eight prison staff, who had remained in contact of already infected police constable of Gurma police outpost, tested positive.
He said that as these prisoners were sent recently to the district jail and were kept in outer cordon possibility of contacting other prisoners of the jail is less. But, he said, as precautionary measures all prisoners and jail staff are going to be screened.
Apart from them, a district hospital staff, a driver of mining inspector, a sanitary staff and wife of other sanitary staff and a man of Lohra area have also been tested positive, he said adding, the total figure of positive cases in the district has reached 72, of which 34 have been cured while 38 are under treatment.
In Ballia, three more positive cases came to light after which total tally of district reached 173, said DM Hari Pratap Shahi adding, 102 have been cured so far while two had died. He said, 69 active cases are being treated in the hospitals of Ballia, Azamgarh and Varanasi.