Nearly half of the 400-odd fresh Covid cases reported in Jharkhand on Thursday were from Ranchi – a district that has already seen a spike of over 350 in cases of infection during the past 72 hours, officials said.

As per government data, at least 403 fresh cases of Covid-19 infection surfaced in State on Thursday, and at least 198 of them were from Ranchi.

The count of fresh cases reported in Ranchi has crossed the 100 mark for three consecutive days now, triggering panic among locals. While government hospitals have run out of beds here, at least four government buildings have been converted to Covid care centres to combat the crisis.

Ranchi also touched East Singhbhum in the total number of Covid cases and accounted for over 1000 cases in the state by Thursday evening - it reported a total of 1061 cases, out of which 758 were active, a bulletin released by the National Health Mission (NHM) highlighted.

As many as 206 patients recovered from the viral infection on Thursday, and the number of active cases in State stood at 3845. The recovery rate in the state was 45.40 per cent as reported on Thursday. Jharkhand, as per NHM data, has witnessed 7166 cases of Covid infection so far.

The state Covid toll jumped to 65 on Thursday as two patients, both from East Singhbhum, died during treatment. The mortality rate irose to 0.93 per cent against the national average of 2.34 per cent.

The government has so far collected samples of 2.5 lakh suspects and tested around 2.4 lakh of them. Around 2.5 lakh people have been put in home quarantine and over 6000 have been sent to institutional quarantine.