16 deaths take Covid toll past 500-mark, 1,000+ new cases again

RANCHI: With 16 casualties in 24 hours, Jharkhand’s Covid toll crossed the 500-mark on Wednesday. The state continued to report a steep rise in fresh infections with 1,601 new cases, taking the cumulative caseload to 56,897, of which 15,726 are active cases, 40,659 have recovered (including 1,297 on Wednesday) and 512 have died.
East Singhbum continued to report the highest number of casualties with six more deaths, followed by Dhanbad with five, Ranchi two and West Singhbhum, Saraikela and Ramgarh reporting one each.
State capital Ranchi continues to dominate the numbers on positive cases with a total of 635 new cases followed by East Singhbhum (250). Ramgarh and Saraikela, which registered a considerable spike last week, continued to register a substantial increase with 98 and 91 fresh cases, followed by Deoghar (73) and West Singhbhum (71).
The state health department officials had one more reason to worry as the positivity rate rose marginally with 7.83% of 20,437 samples testing positive. “The number will continue to increase along with our testing capacity and we are not expecting things to get better until it comes below 5%,” said a senior health department official.
The seven-day growth rate improved and stood at 3.36% in comparison to the national average of 2.16%. However, the seven-days doubling in Jharkhand continue to be around 12 points ahead of national average at 20 days.