Ahmedabad, Aug 8 (PTI) Gujarat's COVID-19 case count mounted to 69,986 on Saturday with addition of 1,101 patients while 23 people died, including 10 in Surat, taking the toll to 2,629, the state Health department said.

A total of 1,135 patients were discharged in the day, taking the count of recoveries to 52,827, the department said.

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A total of 26,272 samples were tested in the last 24 hours in the state, it said, adding that the average rate of conducting tests in the state now stands at 404.18 tests per day per million, it said.

9,56,645 samples have been tested so far in the state, it added.

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At 226, Surat reported the highest number of cases in the day in the state, taking the total count to 15,588.

With ten deaths, the number of fatalities in Surat in the district went up to 678.

Ahmedabad added 158 patients, raising the number of cases to 27,745, the department said, adding the toll rose to 1,630 with five deaths.

Apart from Surat and Ahmedabad, Junagadh, Kutch, Vadodara, Amreli and Gandhinagar reported two deaths each, the department said.

Meanwhile, Surat also reported the highest number of recoveries in the state with 549 patients being discharged in the day. The count of recovered cases in the district now stands at 12,008.

The number of recovered cases in Ahmedabad rose to 22,393 with 121 patients getting discharged in the day.

During the day, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and his deputy Nitin Patel visited Bhavnagar and Jamnagar to take stock of preparedness of administration to deal with the pandemic.

Interacting with reporters, the CM said the government continues to ramp up daily number of tests.

He said the number of tests and screening of people entering Bhavnagar will be increased.

Gujarat COVID-19 figures are as follows: Positive cases 69,986, new cases 1,101, deaths 2,629, discharged 52,827, active cases 14,530 and people tested so far 9,56,645.

(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)