As many as 97 people were found to be infected by the Covid-19 virus in Jharkhand on Thursday, the highest single-day-spike in the month of March, as per the figures compiled by the National Health Mission (NHM).
The count of active cases of infection also jumped to 624 on the day as the state reported only 72 Covid recoveries against the close to 100 fresh cases, a bulletin released by the NHM stated. However, the number of patients dropped to 363 on Thursday with the district reporting 48 recoveries against 38 cases in the past 24 hours.
As per government data, swab samples of over 13,000 people were tested, of which less than 1 per cent were found to be infected. The state administration has, however, launched special drives to check the sudden rise of Covid-19 cases this week.
So far, over 1.20 lakh people have been infected by the contagious virus in Jharkhand while over 98 per cent have recovered. So far, the virus has claimed around 1094 lives in the state, however, no fresh cases of deaths were reported on Thursday.
Meanwhile, over 18,000 Jharkhand residents, including 12,597 senior citizens and 2604 middle-aged individuals with co-morbid conditions, were administered the first dose of Covishield vaccine on Thursday, while 8648 healthcare and frontline workers got the second jab, highlighted the NHM report.
The state after failing to achieve more than 10 per cent of vaccination target for the first dose since March 10, it successfully managed to inoculate 33 per cent of healthcare and frontline workers registered for the jab on Thursday, stated a report released by NHM. However, only 11 per cent of over 80,000 beneficiaries registered for the second dose got the jab on the day.
Ranchi alone saw 2506 people being vaccinated on Thursday, the highest among the 24 districts in Jharkhand. With 174 jabs administered, Koderma was the worst performer for the day. As many as 3194 healthcare and frontline workers got the first jab on Thursday.
As per government data, over 5.7 lakh people have already been administered the first dose of the vaccine in Jharkhand so far. The state plans to vaccinate more than 10 lakh rural residents, especially senior citizens, in a special Panchayat level drive starting Saturday, officials said.
Of the over 5.7 lakh people vaccinated so far, at least 1.75 lakh were senior citizens and more than 27,000 were middle-ages individuals with comorbid conditions. As many as 1,93,196 beneficiaries have also been administered the second dose of the vaccine so far in Jharkhand.