14 new Covid- 19 cases in state, total 93
COUNT 10 Indian evacuees from Iran kept in Army wellness centres in Jodhpur and Jaisalmer among 14 positive cases
JAIPUR: There was a surge in the number of Covid-19 positive cases among the Indians evacuated from Iran and kept in Army Wellness Centres in Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, as 10 of them tested positive on Tuesday.
With this, 17 of the Iran evacuees have become Covid-19 positive, and with four others in other parts of the state, the total number of Covid-19 cases in Rajasthan went up to 93, said officials.
According to a statement from the health department, four people, one each from Jaipur, Jhunjhunu, Dungarpur and Ajmer, also tested positive on Tuesday.
The 44-year-old Jhunjhunu man has travel history to Dubai; 17-year-old girl in Ajmer is sister of the person, who was found positive on March 28; the 65-year-old man in Dungarpur is father of the person, who was diagnosed as Covid-19 patient on March 27; and a 60-year-old man in medical ICU of SMS Hospital tested positive in Jaipur.
From among the evacuees from Iran, 10 new cases tested positive in testing facilities at Jodhpur. Seven of them tested positive at SN Medical College and three at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Jodhpur. In all, 5,743 samples have been tested across Rajasthan, out of which 5,207 tested negative and 443 are under process.
Health minister Raghu Sharma said 14 positive cases have turned negative – four of them have been discharged from hospital and the remaining 10 are under observation.
He said against the target of 100,000 quarantine beds, 95,000 had been identified. 16,000 isolation beds were available in the state, the minister said.
“A large number of people have returned to their homes in Rajasthan in last few days. The department will speed up the active surveillance work to screen all of them and the work to take samples of people who display symptoms of the viral infection,” Sharma said.
The rising number of positive cases in Ramganj and Ajmer was worrying. “We are tracing contacts of these positive cases to quarantine all the suspected cases,” he said. So far, 1,600 people have been identified as contacts of people who are already Covid-19 patients.
In Jaipur, 16 new contacts of the Ramganj man, who returned from Oman on March 13 and tested positive on March 26, were identified on Tuesday. “They have been shifted to the quarantine facility of Rajasthan University of Health Sciences (RUHS),” said Jaipur chief medical and health officer Narottam Sharma.