‘Vaccination not helping due to new variants’: Gujarat HC asks state to ramp up testing

Hearing on suo motu PIL on the COVID-19 situation in the state, the HC said, “We’re not satisfied with govt’s policy. Something needs to be corrected so that people can do something about this pandemic. Court also says that it will meet next on Thursday, 15th April to check what actions are taken by govt”.

The court also suggested ways to curb covid cases in the state and instructed the state to cap number of people at weddings at 50, make booth at housing societies to check people’s health, take help of religious centers that can provide covid care centre and isolation facility.

Gujarat reported 5,469 new cases of coronavirus on Sunday, its biggest single-day rise since the beginning of the pandemic, which took its caseload to 3,47,495, the health department said.

The death toll due to the virus went up to 4,800 as 54 patients succumbed to the infection during the day.

Of them, 20 died in Ahmedabad district, followed by 18 in Surat, seven in Vadodara, five in Rajkot, two in Banaskantha, and one each in Gandhinagar and Jamnagar.

Ahmedabad city registered 1,504 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. It was followed by 1,087 cases in Surat city, 405 in Rajkot city, 361 in Surat district, 277 in Vadodara city, 189 in Jamnagar city, 139 in Vadodara district, 127 in Mehsana, 124 in Patan and 123 in Jamnagar district.

As many as 2,976 patients got discharge during the day, which took recovery tally to 3,15,127, the department said in a release.

Gujarat’s COVID-19 recovery rate has gone down to 90.69 per cent.

The number of active cases in the state now stands at 27,568. Of these, 203 patients are on ventilator support.

As many as 80.55 lakh persons in the state were given the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 10.67 lakh were administered the second dose till date, the release said.

A total of 76 new cases were reported in the adjoining union territory of Dadra Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu in the last 24 hours, the authorities said in a statement.

Besides, 20 patients recovered and got discharge during the day.

Of the total number of 4,058 people found positive for coronavirus in the union territory since the outbreak, two have died, 3,659 have recovered, while 397 cases are still active, the UT administration said in the release.