GUWAHATI, Aug 7 - Minister of State for Health Pijush Hazarika today said the COVID-19 positivity rate in the State is expected to go down further in the next few days. �We feel it will go down to 2/3 per cent by August 15,� he told journalists, also adding that a �lot would depend on the people too�.
On August 5, the positivity rate came down to 3.86 per cent. However, yesterday it went up again to 4.25 per cent. Yesterday 55,671 tests were conducted and 2,372 positive patients were detected, of which 470 were from Guwahati alone.
�The Central government had made a prediction that Assam could get 71,000 cases by August 15. But we feel, it would not be that much. We hope to contain it to around 65,000,� he added.
Hazarika also said the health department was continuously ramping up its testing infrastructure and on August 12 it hopes to conduct one lakh tests in a single day.
A total of 2,679 cases were detected out of 58,531 tests conducted today. Of them, 442 were in Guwahati. The total COVID-19 cases in the State touched 55,496.
Six more COVID-19 patients succumbed to their infections today, taking the number of deaths due to the virus to 132 in the State. The victims have been identified as Praban Kumar Agarwala (57) of Dhubri, Sita Devi (56) of Kokrajhar, Renu Gogoi (60) of Dibrugarh, Samar Deb (61) of Cachar, Abdul Gofur (68) of Nagaon and Nilmani Chakraborty (69) of Kamrup (Metro). However, 1,585 patients were released today, taking the total number of discharged patients to 38,809.
The COVID-19 tally in the State has increased by over 2,000 new cases for four consecutive days. The number of active COVID-19 positive cases has also exceeded 15,000 for the first time. There were 3,292 on institutional quarantine till yesterday and 18,1747 are being tracked in home quarantine.
