19 COVID patients who had been to Kumb Mela fled from hospital in Uttarakhand

New Delhi: Nineteen COVID positive patients from Rajasthan who were recuperating at a hospital in Tehri after having visited the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar have fled, Times of India reported.

According to the report, the incident has triggered panic among health officials and police in Uttarakhand.

The district administration has filed an FIR and alerted Rajasthan government. “We were told that they had been to the Kumbh,” ToI quoted Health Department official as saying.

Meanhwile, India, in the last 24 hours, reported a spike of 2,61,500 COVID cases and 1,501 deaths, according to data from the country’s Health Ministry.

The total cases in the country now stand at 1,47,88,109. There are now 18,01,316 active cases while 1,28,09,643 people have recovered from the disease. The overall death toll has reached 1,77,150. As many as 12,26,22,590 people have been vaccinated so far.

Underlining the “alarming rise in a daily number of active cases” and “a sharp growth of 10.2% in the number of deaths”, India’s Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday said, “the widening gap between daily new cases and daily new recoveries reflects that the infection is spreading at a much faster rate than recoveries with consistently growing active cases”.

At a meeting to review the availability of oxygen, ventilators, manpower, medicines and hospital beds in 11 states/UTs reporting a surge in COVID cases, Harsh Vardhan said: “India is currently reporting the sharpest growth rate of 7.6% in new Covid cases, which is 1.3 times higher than the case growth rate of 5.5% reported in June 2020.”

He said the GoI is rushing 6,303 additional ventilators to six states of concern: 1121 ventilators to Maharashtra, 1700 to Uttar Pradesh, 1500 to Jharkhand, 1600 to Gujarat, 152 to Madhya Pradesh, and 230 to Chhattisgarh.