PATNA: Amid hospitals in the state capital turning away patients due to acute oxygen supply shortage and crematoriums working round-the-clock,
Bihar recorded its worst day of the Covid-19 pandemic so far with 6,133 new cases and 24 deaths in the past 24 hours out of 1,01,236 samples tested.
Bihar's
Covid tally crossed the 3 lakh mark on Thursday even as the death toll has reached 1,675. The number of active cases went up sharply by 22.5% to 29,079 from 23,725 on Wednesday. The positivity rate, too, rose sharply to 6.05%, which stood at 4.7% on Wednesday.
Patna district, too, reported its highest single-day spike with 2,105 new cases on Thursday. The district tally has climbed up to 66,913, while 56,109 people have recovered, and as many as 10,318 are battling with the disease.
As patients queued up, many private hospitals in Patna were forced to decline admission to critically ill Covid patients due to lack of oxygen supply. Some even had to discharge admitted patients.
Pankaj Kumar Mehta administrator and nodal officer for Covid at the Medizone Hospital, Kankerbagh, said 90% of hospitals in Patna are facing an acute shortage of oxygen supply.
Even as the hospitals struggled to cope with the spike in demand for oxygen, the state government swung into action by ordering oxygen manufacturing plants in the state capital to divert 90% of their supply from industrial units to hospitals to meet the shortage. As per Patna DM Chandrasekhar Singh, private hospitals of Patna are generating a demand of 10,000 oxygen cylinders per day while the plants can refill only around 7,000 cylinders.
Meanwhile, the rise in Covid fatalities has choked the two
PMC crematoriums in Patna. Seeing the huge rush, Patna municipal commissioner Himanshu Sharma on Thursday said Covid victims would be cremated free of charge at the ghats managed by the civic body. The PMC charges Rs 300 for electric cremation and Rs 10,000 for wooden pyre cremation.
On the case fatality rate (CFR), the state reported a 0.3% rise, which stood at 4.7% on Thursday. Patna recorded the maximum Covid deaths at seven, taking the overall district toll to 486, as per data provided by the
health department.
The other fatalities were reported from Gaya (3), Katihar (3), Darbhanga (2), Paschim Champaran (2) and one each in Begusarai, Bhojpur, Jehanabad, Madhepura, Munger, Muzaffarpur and Rohtas.
Of the 3,01,304 caseload, 2,70,550 people have recovered while the recovery rate has sharply declined by 36.5% in the past 24 hours. On Wednesday, as many as 1,189 people recovered, but only 755 people were recorded cured on Thursday.
Other districts, which reported the maximum number of Covid- 19 cases include 601 in Bhagalpur, Gaya (431), Muzaffarpur (265), Begusarai (174), Saran (171), Aurangabad (165), Munger (147) and West Champaran (143).
Altogether 12 people died Thursday at Covid hospitals in the state capital. Four deaths were reported at PMCH while
NMCH recorded six deaths, including a 32-year-old woman from Begusarai while the other deceased were from Patna. One 65-year-old woman from Harla succumbed due to infection while four men aged 65, 70, 71 and 86 from Kankerbagh, Patna City, Jakkanpur and Hanuman Nagar. As many as 41 more positive patients have been admitted to the hospital while only four discharged.
All India Institute of Medical Sciences- Patna (AIIMS-P) reported the death of a 24-year-old woman from Patna’s Banauli area. The nodal officer for Covid, Dr Sanjeev Kumar said 27 patients were admitted to the AIIMS-P while six people discharged on Thursday. The number of patients admitted at AIIMS- P now stood at 145.