Jharkhand’s Covid-19 recovery rate jumped further to 83.40 per cent on Saturday after as many as 1,324 patients recovered from the infection, while 1,226 people tested positive for the virus in 24 hours, figures released by the state health department stated.

Jharkhand is among the few states that have a better recovery rate than the national average of 82.10 per cent, officials said. Despite the drop in the number of active cases in Jharkhand on Saturday, the number of patients increased in Ranchi, which continues to be the worst-affected district in Jharkhand in terms of cases.

As many as 425 cases surfaced in Ranchi against 318 recoveries during the day, taking the number of active cases in the district to 3,955, a bulletin released by the National Health Mission (NHM) highlighted. As per the bulletin, Ranchi accounted for nearly 35 per cent of the total 12,426 active cases of infection in Jharkhand.

The number of active cases dropped in East Singhbhum on Saturday after 214 people were found infected there against 263 recoveries. As per the NHM bulletin, the number of active cases in East Singhbhum dropped to 2,119. The figures also highlighted that Ranchi and East Singhbhum account for around 50 per cent of the active cases in Jharkhand.

Six more patients died during treatment in the state on Saturday, taking the toll in Jharkhand to 670, the NHM bulletin stated. As per the bulletin, East Singhbhum reported two of the six deaths on Saturday and the toll in the district alone jumped to 287, which is the highest among all districts in Jharkhand. The mortality rate in Jharkhand was 0.84 per cent on Saturday against the national mortality rate of 1.60 per cent.

So far, the government has collected swab samples of 20.42 lakh people across Jharkhand and tested 20.29 lakh of them. Of those tested, 78,935 have been found Covid-19 positive since March. As many as 65,839 of these patients have recovered from the infection. As per government data, on Saturday, health workers tested swab samples of 30,152 people and 28,926 of them came negative.

The Covid-19 tally in Ranchi was close to 18,000, while that in East Singhbhum was nearly 13,500, the government data stated. These two districts have reported 391 casualties, which is nearly 60 per cent of the total deaths that have occurred in Jharkhand since March this year.