89 more COVID fatalities rattle Bihar; positivity rate, active caseload decline

Patna, May 16 (PTI) Bihar was on Sunday rattled by 89 more COVID-19 fatalities, though its active caseload and the number of cases reported in a day continued to decline, leading to further improvement in the rate of recovery and a drop in the positivity ratio.

According to the health department, the death toll has now reached 3,832, an increase of more than 1,000 since the beginning of this month when the state went under a lockdown to contain the raging second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of fresh cases was 6,894, the first occasion in the past several weeks when the figure was less than 7,000.

The total number of cases confirmed in the state since the beginning of the pandemic more than a year ago is 6.51 lakh.

The intensity of the recent outbreak can be gauged from the fact that more than half of the coronavirus infections in Bihar so far have been reported in the past one month.

On the brighter side, 5.72 lakh people have recovered and the number of active cases, which was a week ago more than one lakh, has come down to 75,089.

The recovery rate was at 87.89, a nearly 10 per cent increase compared with a fortnight ago.

The positivity ratio has come down from about 15.1 per cent to 5.7 per cent in two weeks.

The number of samples tested in the state, which has a population of about 13 crores, is 2.80 crore.

Vaccination drive is also underway, and with more than 90 lakh of its people having received the jabs, including 7.25 lakh in the economically productive and outgoing age group of 18-44 years, the state hopes the situation to improve further in foreseeable future. PTI NAC BDC BDC