Bihar records 258 new Covid cases, Araria put on alert

PATNA: Araria accounted for 50 of the 258 fresh Covid-19 cases registered in Bihar in a single day on Thursday. With a sudden spike in the number of cases, the district has been put on high alert.
Special secretary of the health department, Manoj Kumar, told TOI that new Covid cases had been reported from different parts of Araria and the officials told to begin contact tracing, create microcontainment zones and look into the travel history of the patients.
“Although no new variant has been detected in Bihar yet, nearly 5% of the positive samples will be sent to Odisha for a retest,” Manoj said, adding that neighbouring Supaul was also put on high alert even if it had reported only one Covid positive case.
Some other districts, which reported an increase in the number of positive cases, were Patna (54), Begusarai (23), Rohtas (15), Samastipur (14), Bhagalpur (13) and Jehanabad (13).
Besides, two deaths — one each from Patna and Vaishali — were registered on Thursday, taking Bihar’s toll to 1,567. Altogether 52,784 samples were tested in 24 hours in 33 districts of the state.
A fortnight ago, only 45 people had tested positive for Covid in Bihar on March 11. There were 323 active cases back then. However, the number of active cases has reached 923 in the state in only two weeks.
Meanwhile, as many as 1,02,192 vaccine shots were administered on Thursday. The beneficiaries included those who took both their first and second doses. Altogether 10.76 lakh senior citizens and 1.67 lakh people above the age of 45 years with comorbidities have been inoculated so far.