More than 100 Jharkhand residents, including 53 from Ranchi alone, died of Covid-19 infection on Thursday, while the state reported a record spike of 7595 Covid cases on the day, figures compiled by the National Health Mission (NHM) revealed.

Of the 106 Covid patients who died on Thursday, 14 were from East Singhbhum and 10 from Ramgarh, a bulletin released by the NHM stated. The 53 casualties in Ranchi took the Covid toll in the district to 471 and that in Jharkhand to 1715, the bulletin further stated. As per NHM data, the Covid toll in East Singhbhum reached 473 on Thursday.

Ranchi also accounted for 1467 of the over 7500 Covid cases on the day, while East Singhbhum reported a spike of 729 cases. As per government data, the active caseload in Ranchi jumped to 13,518 on Thursday, while the number of patients in East Singhbhum reached 5546. These two districts account for nearly 50 per cent of the 40,942 active cases in the state.

The bulletin released by the NHM on Thursday highlighted that the growth rate of infection in Jharkhand reached 2.55 per cent against the national average of 1.32 per cent, while the doubling rate in the state dropped to 27.58 days against the national average of 52.79 days. The state reported only 2373 recoveries on the day, which brought the Covid recovery rate further down to 76.93 per cent.

Among other districts, Bokaro reported spike of 432 cases against 172 recoveries, while Deoghar reported 459 cases against 115 recoveries. As many as 451 people were found infected in Koderma and 407 in Palamu. Ramgarh reported a spike of 542 cases against only 71 recoveries on the day.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Thursday announced that the state government will provide vaccines free of cost to people above the age of 18 years once the vaccination is made open for them from May 1. Soren took to Twitter to make this announcement and stated that the government was working day and night to overcome the Covid crisis.

The government on Thursday tested swab samples of 73,903 people and more than 10 per cent of them were found infected. As per government data, over 1.84 lakh people have been infected by the mysterious virus in Jharkhand so far and around 1.42 lakh of them have recovered.

The state also administered the first dose of the vaccine to 12,439 residents, around 23 per cent of those registered for the jab. As many as 8783 residents, around 3 per cent of those registered, were administered the second jab on the day.