Bihar’s COVID-19 tally has crossed 90K mark with 3,741 fresh positive cases on Wednesday, according to the health department. The active cases in the state stands at 33,049.
As per the bulletin released by Bihar Health Department, 83,314 coronavirus samples have been tested so far. The number of recovered patients touched 57,039 and the recovery rate of the state is 65.70%.
On August 11, the Patna district administration has constituted a cell to probe allegations of exorbitant charges levied by private hospitals for treatment of Covid-19 patients even as cases continued to spike in Bihar.
While reviewing the situation in the capital, Patna district magistrate Kumar Ravi accepted that he had received complaints of exorbitant money being charged by private hospitals for the treatment of Covid-19 patients.
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar Tuesday told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the state plans to raise the testing rate for COVID-19 to over one lakh per day.
“The RT-PCR facility will soon be introduced at five more medical college hospitals which would help in raising the daily average by about 2300. Moreover, we have plans to purchase 10 RT-PCR and RNA extraction machines which would raise our capacity by another 5,000”, he said.
The state government has set a target of conducting more than one lakh tests every day, he added.
PM Narendra Modi called out five states for low testing rates for coronavirus as he interacted with 10 chief ministers on the handling of the pandemic. Of the five states, three – Bihar, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh – are states where the BJP is in power. The other two that were asked to ramp up testing at the meeting held via video conferencing were West Bengal and Telangana.
Meanwhile, the flood situation in Bihar deteriorated on Wednesday after 2.16 lakh more people were affected by the calamity. The number of those affected has now reached 77.18 lakh in 16 districts.
The number of people who died in flood-related incidents in the state remained at 24, a Disaster Management Department bulletin said.