72-year-old man succumbs to coronavirus infection in Uttarakhand, 37 new cases detected

One more COVID-19 patient died in Uttarakhand on Thursday that saw the state's pandemic tally rise to 2,984 with the detection of 37 new cases, as per the state government's bulletin.

A 72-year-old COVID-19 patient died at Doon Medical College here on Thursday, a state health department bulletin here said.

He was suffering from co-morbidities like bilateral pneumonitis, type 2 diabetes mellitus and coronary artery disease, the bulletin said quoting the death summary received from the hospital. With this, the number of COVID-19 patients to have died in the state has climbed to 42.

As many as 37 new cases were reported in the state on Thursday taking the number of positive cases to 2,984 out of which 2,405 have recovered, 42 are dead and 27 have migrated out of the state, the bulletin stated.

Nainital reported 17 new cases, Udham Singh Nagar 16 while Almora, Dehradun, Pauri and Pithoragarh reported one each.

There are 510 active cases and the doubling rate has improved to 57.56 days while recovery percentage is 80.60 per cent, the bulletin said.

Citing substantial improvement in the doubling rate which stood at 3.4 days at one time, the Uttarakhand government claimed the coronavirus situation in the state is better than the national average. "There was a time when our doubling rate stood at 3.4 days with migrants returning in lakhs from different parts of the country especially Delhi and Maharashtra but now it has improved substantially and the credit goes to our corona warriors," Cabinet minister and the state government's spokesman Madan Kaushik said.

He said testing facilities have also been stepped up with seven labs conducting them within the state and the samples also being sent to NCDC, Delhi and PGIMER, Chandigarh.

The state has 24,327 isolation beds, 273 ICU beds and 161 ventilators. Only 10-12 per cent of the isolation beds are in use at present, Kaushik said, adding that there are adequate arrangements to deal with any situation.