A 22-year-old migrant worker, who died three days ago soon upon his return from Delhi, was acknowledged on Friday as Bihar's 11th COVID-19 casualty by the state health department, which also said with 118 fresh coronavirus cases, the tally in the state has shot up to 2,105.
According to a senior health department official, the deceased, who belonged to Khagaria district, had returned to the state by a special train on Tuesday.
He had high fever and died within hours of arrival, following which his sample was collected and sent for testing. The report confirmed that he was infected with the dreaded coronavirus.
"He goes down in our records as the 11th COVID-19 fatality in the state and the second in Khagaria," the official said.
A 55-year-old man, who had returned from Mumbai, had breathed his last in the district on May 15. He was confirmed as a COVID-19 casualty two days later, after his sample collected upon his death tested positive for the disease.
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Another 55-year-old COVID-19 patient from the district died following cardiac arrest at a Begusarai hospital on Tuesday. He, however, was counted as a Begusarai casualty.
Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus cases has more than doubled in the state within a week of breaching the four-digit-mark.
The north Bihar district of Madhubani witnessed an explosion of 34 cases that took its tally to 115 on Friday.
Among the fresh cases, barring a nine-year-old boy, all others are men in the age group of 20-45 years, according to the figures released by the state health department.
Patna district reported nine fresh cases and remained at the top in the state with a tally of 186.
Other districts that reported fresh cases were Katihar (19), Begusarai (17), Samastipur (10), Gopalganj (nine), Saran (six), Khagaria (five), Nawada (three), Madhepura (two) and Vaishali, East Champaran, Arwal and Supaul (one each).
After Patna, the district with the highest tallies are Munger (137), Rohtas (123), Begusarai (122), Madhubani (115), Jehanabad (106) and Buxar (100).
Of the 11 fatalities, Patna, Vaishali and Khagaria have accounted for two each, while one death each has been reported from Munger, Sitamarhi, East Champaran, Begusarai and Rohtas.
The number of patients who have been discharged from hospitals after full recovery is 629 in the state.
The steep rise in the number of cases in Bihar, which reported its first couple of cases as late as March 22 and where it took four weeks for the tally to cross the 100-mark, has been attributed to the massive influx of migrant workers, who have been returning in droves since the beginning of this month, when "Shramik Special" trains started running.
The health department put the figure of migrants testing positive for the disease since May 3 at 1,184, which is over two-thirds of the number of cases reported during the period.
Most of the COVID-19 positive migrants have come from Delhi (333), followed by Maharashtra (293), Gujarat (212), Haryana (80), West Bengal (65), Rajasthan (45), Uttar Pradesh (41) and Telangana (38), according to the break-up provided by the department.
According to the data shared by the state government, 1.40 lakh people came from outside the state by 85 trains on Friday and over 1.50 lakh are expected to arrive on Saturday by more than 90 trains.
The number of samples tested in the state till date is 58,905, registering an increase of about 3,200 since Thursday.
The state government has been making efforts to raise its testing capacity to 10,000 samples per day.
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