Bihar health department secretary, Ravi Shankar Choudhary, among 54 dead, Covid caseshit another peak

PATNA: The state health department additional secretary, Ravi Shankar Choudhary, died of Covid-19 complications on Friday. He was among the 54 fatalities officially reported even as Bihar created yet anotherrecord with 12,672 people testing positive in a day out of 1,0,8147 samples tested.
Choudhary, who had also served as Arwal DM, breathed his last at AIIMS-Patna. CM Nitish Kumar and healthminister Mangal Pandey expressed deep condolence over his death. Nitish said Choudhary’s demise was a big loss to the administration and society and prayed for the departed soul and his family. Pandey also prayed for the departed soul and called his death a big loss for the department.
On the back of the spiking caseload and rising deaths, Bihar’s Covid positivity rate on Friday also reached 11.71%, which is the highest so far and above the danger mark. Positivity rate is the percentage of people who have tested positive against the total number of tests done. WHO has kept a 5% positivity rate as the threshold and any figure above it indicates danger.
As per data shared by the health department, out of the 54 deaths reported in the state, the three highest number of fatalities are 13 from Patna district, seven from Muzaffarpur and five from West Champaran.
The state capital also reported the highest number of new cases where 2,801 people tested positive taking the active cases in the district to 16,867. Covid-19 cases reported from other districts are Gaya (816), Aurangabad (748), Muzaffarpur (704), Saran (617) and Begusarai (607). Hence, with the increase in the number of new cases, active ones in Bihar have reached 76418.
Meanwhile, 77,466 Covid-19 vaccines were administered on Friday, including both the first and the second doses. While 53,423 beneficiaries got their first shot, another 25,043 got the second shot. So far, a total of 55.37 lakh beneficiaries have got the first dose and another 9.25 lakh have got the second dose.