Port Blair, May 24 (PTI) Andaman and Nicobar Islands COVID-19 tally rose to 6,844 as 24 more people tested positive for the virus while two new fatalities pushed the death toll in the union territory to 103, a health department official said on Monday.

All the new cases were detected during contact tracing, he said.

The archipelago now has 268 active COVID-19 cases of which 260 are in South Andaman district and eight in North and Middle Andaman district, the official said.

Thirty-two people were cured of the disease during the period, taking the total number of recoveries in the archipelago to 6,473.

The administration has so far tested 3,83,265 samples for COVID-19 and the test positivity rate is 1.79 per cent.

The official said a total of 1,20,801 beneficiaries have been inoculated in the union territory so far.

A lockdown has been imposed in the South Andaman district which has reported the maximum number of cases from Monday till May 31 to break the chain of the coronavirus infection. All shops selling essential items will remain open between 6 am and 8 am daily during the period.

All passengers arriving by flight or ship have to mandatorily undergo a Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) before they are allowed entry into the islands.

(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)