by: Navjeevan Express

COVID19: Another patient dies in Vadodara, Gujarat fatality rises to 7, positive cases at 87

NE NEWS SERVICE

GANDHINAGAR, APRIL 2

A 52-year-old coronavirus patient died in Gujarat’s Vadodara district early Thursday morning, an official said.

The man was admitted to SSG Hospital in Vadodara on March 19 after he returned from Sri Lanka and tested positive for coronavirus, principal secretary (health) Jayanti Ravi told reporters in Gandhinagar.

With this, the COVID-29 death toll in the state has reached seven, she said.

So far, there are 87 COVID-19 cases in the state. No new case has been reported in the state in the last 12 hours.

Out of these patients, seven have died and seven discharged after recovery. The remaining 73 are still undergoing treatment, the official said.

To date, 31 cases have been reported from Ahmedabad, followed by Surat-12, Rajkot-10, Vadodara-nine, Bhavnagar-six, Porbandar-three, Gir Somnath-two, and Kutch, Mehsana, and Panchmahal-one each.

While 33 patients have foreign travel history, eight have a history of travelling to other states and 46 are cases of local transmission, said Ravi.

Out of the total 1,789 people tested so far in Gujarat for coronavirus, 1,693 were found negative, 87 positive, and results of nine are pending, she said.

Over 18,800 people are still quarantined in the state.

The official said there is no scarcity of personal protection equipment and N95 masks in the state.

Government ropes in primary school teachers to trace migrant workers and distributes free ration

The Gujarat government has roped in primary school teachers to trace migrant workers and provide them free ration during the unprecedented lockdown in view of the coronavirus outbreak. Teachers from government-run schools were called-in on Wednesday for a door-to-door survey of villages to find the migrant workers there and inform them about their whereabouts to the authorities concerned.

Lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus has turned into a humanitarian crisis as it resulted in exodus of migrant workers, who have lost their jobs and have been walking to their native places in the absence of any transportation facilities.

However, the government has been taking steps to stop their movement as of now. A group of teachers on Wednesday went to every house in Chacharavadi Vasna village near the Ahmedabad-Rajkot highway here in the industrial cluster of Changodar.

After surveying the village, the teachers found 14 families of migrant labourers hailing from different parts of the country and not having ration cards of Gujarat. “We conducted a survey of every house to find the poor families who do not have ration cards. Fourteen such families have been identified in the village and we have given the information to higher officials,” a teacher of a government primary school in Chacharavadi Vasna said.

The list includes names of Anil Yadav and his wife, who came from Uttar Pradesh and used to sell a street snack outside a factory in the village. “Those working in factories are the responsibility of factory owners. We are identifying those not working in the organised sector and are on their own,” said another teacher.