3 new COVID-19 cases push Andamans tally to 7,496

Port Blair, July 14 dmanewsdesk:  Three new COVID-19 cases pushed the tally in the union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands to 7,496, a health department official said on Wednesday.

Two cases were detected during contact tracing and one was airport arrival, the official said.

Passengers arriving by flight have to undergo mandatory RT-PCR test before they are allowed entry into the islands, he said.

The COVID-19 death toll in the archipelago remained at 129 as no fresh fatality due to the contagion was reported in the last 24 hours, the official said.

The union territory now has nine active COVID-19 cases and all the patients are in the South Andaman district while the other two districts – North and Middle Andaman and Nicobar – are now COVID-19 free.

Three more patients recovered from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of recoveries to 7,358, he said.

The Andaman and Nicobar administration has so far tested 4,21,108 samples for COVID-19 and the cumulative test positivity rate is 1.78 per cent, the official added.

A total of 2,38,578 people have been inoculated so far, of which 1,67,978 people have received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 70,600 people have received the second dose of the vaccine, he said, adding that the union territory has a total population of 4 lakh people.

Meanwhile, Health secretary R N Sharma on Tuesday said the union territory administration has received 22,200 doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Out of this, about 5,000 vaccine doses will be sent to North and Middle Andaman district and 2,000 doses to Nicobar district.

Inoculation of people against the disease is being carried out smoothly, he said.

The health secretary said the administration is taking all necessary steps to contain the spread of the disease and people are requested to follow COVID appropriate behaviour.

Source: PTI