COVID-19 cases in Assam touch 100-mark as nine people test positive

Nine people, including a nine-year-old boy, tested positive for COVID-19 in Assam as the state's total number of cases touched the 100-mark, Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said. The boy, who is a resident of Ward Number 3 of Jorhat town, tested positive after returning from Delhi. He is undergoing treatment at the Jorhat Medical College and Hospital, he said.

The boy is the youngest COVID-19 patient in Assam where the infection was also detected in three other minors. One of them, a 16-year-old girl, was found to be positive after she died in Guwahati last week. The other two minors are a 16-year-old girl from Bongaigaon, and a 13-year-old girl who tested positive after returning from Mumbai where she underwent a heart surgery. Three of the fresh cases were detected among those at the Sarusajai quarantine centre.

While two of them arrived from Mumbai, the other one returned from Bihar, Sarma said. Among the fresh cases was a 28-year-old man from Cachar who returned from Chennai on Saturday. He is undergoing treatment in the Jorhat Medical College and Hospital, the minister said. There are 55 active cases in Assam at present. While two persons have died and two have migrated out of the state, 41 have recovered, he said. Four other cases were reported late Saturday night.

Two of them are from Guwahati and one each from Sonitpur and Sivasagar. Two of the four patients were in quarantine centres in Guwahati and Jorhat, Sarma said. The patients from Guwahati have been admitted to Mahendra Mohan Choudhury Hospital (MMCH), the one from Sonitpur at Tezpur Medical College and Hospital and the other person is being treated at the Jorhat Medical College and Hospital.

Assam has so far tested 34,376 samples for COVID-19. Out of them, 100 were found to be positive, 32,035 were negative and the results of the remaining are awaited. Meanwhile, two persons who stayed in rented accommodations in Guwahati tested positive after going back to Tripura, following which the Kamrup (Metro) district administration declared parts of the Rukminigaon and Katahbari areas as containment zones.

The district administration also declared the Fatashil Tiniali area as a containment zone as a person who tested positive lived there. Meanwhile, the Congress Assam unit made arrangements to send back 120 migrants from West Bengal to their state in five buses from the Inter-State Bus Terminus in Guwahati, the party's state president Ripun Bora said.

Thirty workers from Assam are also returning from Siliguri in a bus arranged by West Bengal Congress MLA Shankar Malakar. They will go back to their homes in Jorhat, Golaghat and Lakhimpur.