COVID-19 claims 14 more lives in Bihar; caseload crosses 20,000

Bihar on Wednesday reported its sharpest rise in COVID-19 deaths with 14 casualties within a span of 24 hours, while 1,320 fresh cases caused the state's tally to breach the 20,000-mark, according to the state health department.

From the villages situated on the outskirts of the state capital, to its posh localities and hallowed precincts of the Patna High Court, the Raj Bhawan and Chief Ministers Residence, people have tested positive everywhere, though the department was tight-lipped on details.

In West Champaran district, Sanjay Jaiswal, the Lok Sabha chief whip of the ruling BJP at the centre and also its Bihar unit president, tested positive along with some close members of his family, a health department official said.

Jaiswal is understood to have caught the contagion during his visit last week to the party’s state headquarters here which emerged as a hot spot of sorts on the previous day when 24 people, including party full-timers and employees hired for running errands at the office, had tested positive.

Among the fresh casualties, five deaths were reported in Patna district, followed by two each in Gaya and Munger and one each in Aurangabad, Begusarai, Bhagalpur, Nawada and Saran, the department’s bulletin said.

Patna accounts for the highest number of 23 fatalities so far, followed by Bhagalpur (13), Darbhanga (10), Gaya (09) and Begusarai, Nalanda and Samastipur (07 each).

Patna district was also rattled by 242 fresh cases, which raised its tally to 2,501, the highest in the state, where the aggregate for all 38 districts reached 20,173.

Bhagalpur district, which has the second highest tally of 1,134, on Wednesday recorded its biggest single-day spike of 125 cases. Those testing positive included at least six reputed medical practitioners.

The terror of the coronavirus was witnessed in the town where the district is headquartered when a middle-aged town visited a medical store to purchase a medicine for his evident breathlessness and collapsed face-down.

Onlookers stood frozen for a while and, upon regaining a semblance of composure, tried to resuscitate him by sprinkling water from a distance, fearing that he might be infected.

Upon realising that it was too late they informed the police and health officials who reached the spot and kept a watch till the body was taken away in an ambulance.

The identity of the man was not known.

Health department officials said his sample will be collected before his last rites and sent for testing since shortness of breath is one of several COVID-19 symptoms.

Meanwhile, the state was bracing for a 16-day complete lockdown, announced on Tuesday and to be effective from Thursday, which has been clamped in view of the unprecedented spurt in coronavirus cases over the last few weeks.

Although 13,533 people have recovered so far across the state, 514 of them in the last 24 hours, the rate of recovery has of late not been able to keep pace with the rising cases.

This has caused the state’s recovery rate to plunge to 67.08 per cent, a drop of more than 10 per cent in a fortnight.

The number of samples tested after Tuesday was 10,052.