India News | 28 New COVID-19 Cases Push Andamans Tally to 7,363

Port Blair, Jun 19 (PTI) Andaman and Nicobar Islands reported 28 new COVID-19 cases, pushing the tally in the union territory to 7,363, a health department official said on Saturday.

Twenty-seven new patients were detected during contact tracing and one was airport arrival, the official said.

All passengers arriving by flight in the union territory have to undergo a mandatory RT-PCR test before they are allowed entry into the islands, he said.

The COVID-19 death toll remained at 127 as no new fatality due to the infection was reported in the last 24 hours, the official said.

Twenty-four more people were cured of the disease during the period, taking the total number of COVID-19 recoveries in the archipelago to 7,128.

The union territory now has 108 active COVID-19 cases, of which 104 are in the South Andaman district and four in North and Middle Andaman district. The Nicobar district is COVID-19 free as it has no active COVID-19 case, the official said. The union territory has three districts.

A total of 4,00,211 samples have so far been tested for COVID-19 and the cumulative test positivity rate is 1.84 per cent.

The union territory administration has so far inoculated 1,36,622 people, of which 1,19,106 have received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 17,516 have received both doses of the vaccine, he said. The union territory has a total population of 4 lakh people.

Meanwhile, the Information, Publicity and Tourism, secretary of the union territory told reporters on Friday evening that the sudden spurt in the number of COVID-19 cases in the isles is due to detection of COVID-19 cases in Little Andaman Island.

"This has contributed towards the surge in the overall tally of active cases in isles, which was showing a decline in the past few days," Singh said.

He urged the people to follow Covid appropriate behaviour in letter and spirit and help the administration to arrest the spread of coronavirus cases in the union territory.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)