Two more Covid deaths in Assam, infected woman delivers boy in Meghalaya

Two more Covid-19 patients, including a woman, died in Assam on Friday, taking the state's death count to eight while a coronavirus-infected woman gave birth to a baby boy in Meghalaya, officials said.

Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, in a tweet, said that two more people, including one in Silchar Medical College, succumbed to Covid-19, but did not give more details about the victims.

Health officials in Silchar said that a 53-year-old woman cancer patient died in Silchar Medical College on Friday. The woman recently returned to Assam after taking medical treatment in Delhi.

Sarma also tweeted that as on Friday night, the cases in Assam rose to 3,498 with 1,903 of them active.

In Shillong, Meghalaya Health and Family Welfare Minister A.L. Hek said that a Covid-19 positive woman, a returnee from Delhi, has given birth to a boy at the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences.

Both the mother and the new-born are in good health, he added.

Re-testing of the sample of the woman would be done after 14 days quarantine in the hospital and the sample of the new-born would also be tested, the Minister said.

With the return of around four lakh natives to the northeast from other Indian states, the number of Covid-19 cases are rapidly rising in the region with total cases now 5,249, out of which 2,238 are active cases.

Among eight northeastern states, Assam has witnessed the highest surge in Covid-19 positive cases since inter-state movement of people began with around three lakh people returning to the state from western and south Indian states since May 4.

The other seven states also saw a spike. Tripura is second with 960 positive cases (678 active) followed by Manipur with 385 cases (312 active), 164 in Nagaland (134 active), 104 in Mizoram (103 active), 67 in Arunachal Pradesh (63 active), 44 in Meghalaya (21 active 21) and 27 in Sikkim (24 active).

( With inputs from IANS )