Even as the Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended the nationwide lock-down till May 3 in an attempt to contain the spread of novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), two new patients of the disease surfaced in Uttarakhand on Tuesday. Both these patients were reported from Haridwar district. With them the number of COVID-19 affected patients in Uttarakhand increased to 37. The state had not reported any patient of COVID-19 from last five days. It is learnt that both these patients are followers of Tablighi Jamat.
On a positive note two patients of the disease, the followers of the Tablighi Jamat admitted in the Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) hospital have recovered from the disease and were discharged from the hospital. With them the nine patients of the disease have so far recovered and discharged from hospitals.
Meanwhile in an effort to prevent the spread of infection of the virus, the Uttarakhand government on Tuesday issued a ban on spitting in public places.
The additional secretary, medical health and family welfare department, Yugal Kishore Pant that advisory in this regard has been issued. He said that action under COTPA and Uttarakhand anti spiting and littering act would be taken against the offenders. He said that reports of samples of 159 suspected patients of the disease were received by the department till 8 pm on Tuesday and out of them two were found positive for the disease. He said that reports of 273 samples are still awaited. Pant added that a total 2174 samples of suspected patients of the disease have so far been taken for COVID-19 test in the labs of the state. On Tuesday the authorities took samples of 146 suspected patients was taken and sent to the labs for test. From Dehradun district 56 samples were collected while from Haridwar 36 samples were collected on the day. Similarly 19 and 16 samples were collected from Nainital and Uttarkashi districts respectively.
The officer informed that 1818 people are kept in institutional quarantine and 439 suspected patients are in hospital isolation in different parts of the state. A total of 53300 people are in home quarantine in different parts of the state.