More than 60 Jharkhand residents, including 15 from Ranchi, died of Covid-19 infection on Friday, while the State reported a spike of 5,741Covid cases on the day, figures compiled by the National Health Mission (NHM) revealed.
Of the 63 Covid patients who died on Friday, 15 were from East Singhbhum and seven from Koderma, a bulletin released by the NHM stated. The 15 casualties in Ranchi took the Covid toll in the district to 486 and that in Jharkhand to 1778, the bulletin further stated. As per NHM data, the Covid toll in East Singhbhum reached 488 on Friday.
Ranchi also accounted for 1364 of the over 5700 Covid cases on the day, while East Singhbhum reported a spike of 810 cases. As per government data, the active caseload in Ranchi jumped to 14,019 on Friday, while the number of patients in East Singhbhum reached 5986. These two districts account for nearly 50 per cent of the 43,415 active cases in the state.
The bulletin released by the NHM on Friday highlighted that the growth rate of infection in Jharkhand reached 2.63 per cent against the national average of 1.36 per cent, while the doubling rate in the state dropped to 26.65 days against the national average of 51.22 days. The state reported only 3205 recoveries on the day, which brought the Covid recovery rate further down to 76.30 per cent.
Among other districts, Bokaro reported spike of 298 cases against 234 recoveries, while Dhanbad reported 262 cases against 94 recoveries. As many as 228 people were found infected in Koderma and 250 in Palamu. Ramgarh reported a spike of 448 cases against only 98 recoveries on the day.
The government on Friday tested swab samples of 42,523 people and more than 10 per cent of them were found infected. As per government data, over 1.90 lakh people have been infected by the mysterious virus in Jharkhand so far and around 1.45 lakh of them have recovered.
The state also administered the first dose of the vaccine to 16,818 residents, around 18 per cent of those registered for the jab. As many as 11891 residents, around 4 per cent of those registered, were administered the second jab on the day.