Cancer patient in Bihar dies after testing positive for COVID-19; toll rises to 7
A 56-year-old woman, who was suffering from gallbladder cancer and had recently tested positive for COVID-19, died at a hospital here on Wednesday, taking the death toll due to the deadly virus in Bihar to seven, officials said. State epidemiologist Ragini Mishra said the woman breathed her last around noon at Nalanda Medical College and Hospital in the city.
"The woman was a resident of Alamganj locality of the city. She tested positive for COVID-19 on May 10," Mishra told PTI over phone. With this, the number of COVID-19 fatalities in Bihar has risen to seven. All the other six patients, who died earlier, were males.
One of them was a resident of Belchhi block in rural Patna while the others belonged to Munger, Vaishali, East Champaran, Sitamarhi and Rohtas districts. Barring the Rohtas patient, who was 70-years-old, all the others were under 60 years of age and had pre-existing medical conditions. Meanwhile, the state has witnessed its biggest spurt in COVID-19 cases on Tuesday when a total of 118 people tested positive for the deadly virus and the aggregate soared to 879, health department's principal secretary Sanjay Kumar said.
Of these cases, test reports of 49 people who were found to be COVID-19 positive came around midnight Tuesday while 69 people had tested positive earlier in the day.
Those testing positive included a 20-year-old man from Jamui, which had so far been the only one among the 38 districts without a coronavirus case, Kumar said Wednesday.
This was the first instance of the state's tally rising by a three-digit figure in a day.
A steep hike has been witnessed in the number of cases in Bihar over the past one week, when migrants, stuck up elsewhere during the lockdown, began returning in droves.
Patna district accounted for a total of 18 cases during the day. The district housing the state capital is the second worst affected in Bihar with 90 cases, two of whom has died while 35 others have recovered.
A woman in her 40s tested positive in Munger, the worst affected district, raising its total to 116. Rohtas has the third highest number of 72 cases, followed by Nalanda (63), Buxar (56), Begusarai (40), Siwan (34), Kaimur (32), Madhubani (30), Khagaria (27), Bhagalpur (26) and West Champaran (25). Of the 38 districts in the state, only 12 have reported less than 10 cases.
There has been a steep rise in the number of cases reported during the last 10 days which have seen the state's tally grow by close to 400. This has been, to a significant extent, caused by the heavy influx of migrants who have been returning to their home state by special trains and other modes of transport. "The health department has been very attentive to the arrival of migrants from other states and analysing data on a continuous basis," said the principal secretary.
Most migrants testing positive have come from Delhi (55), Gujarat (46), Maharashtra (44), West Bengal (16) and Uttar Pradesh (11). The districts accounting for a high number of migrants testing positive are Begusarai (26), Nalanda (15), Munger and Bhagalpur (13 each), Saharsa and Patna (11 each) and Khagaria (10). The influx of migrants is likely to pick up further with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar urging the Centre to run additional trains, besides coordinating with states for plying buses so that all desirous of a journey back home could return in "the next seven to eight days".
