Six die of Covid-19 in Assam

Guwahati: Six persons, including four women, died due to COVID-19 in Assam on Tuesday, pushing the death toll to 64, and the caseload reached 25,092, Minister for Health and Family Welfare Himanta Biswa Sarma said.

Of the six dead, two each are from Kamrup Metropolitan and Kamrup Rural and one each from Darrang and Dibrugarh districts.

The fatality rate is 0.26 per cent and the recovery rate is 71.87 per cent.

"938 patients have been discharged today. Patients returning home healthy are our beacon of hope," Sarma tweeted.

There are 6,992 active cases, 64 have died and three have migrated out of the state, he said.

Meanwhile, jailed JNU student Sharjeel Imam, lodged in Guwahati Central Jail for his alleged inflammatory speech at an anti-CAA protest last year, tested COVID-19 positive on Tuesday, Inspector General (Prisons) Dasarath Das



said.

He would be shifted to a hospital here for treatment.

Imam was booked under sedition laws for allegedly saying that Assam should be cut off from the rest of the country. He was brought to Guwahati in January for interrogation and has been lodged in Guwahati Central Jail since then.

Das said 435 jail inmates have so far tested positive and these include peasant leader Akhil Gogoi and his two associates along with NDFB Chief Ranjan Daimary.

The minister said with the lockdown restriction easing "we expect cases to increase at an average of 900 to 1,000 daily and reach a peak by September 15".

He said efforts were on to create 10,000 additional beds to accommodate new patients and "we hope to complete it by the first week of August".

The number of samples tested in the state so far is 6,89,343.