Guwahati: Assam health Himanta Biswa Sarma has revealed that yet another person has passed away in the state due to the COVID-19 virus.
The patient, identified as Ranjit Baishya, hails from Nagaon, and was admitted at the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) for his treatment.
"Very sad to share that another #COVID19 patient, Shri Ranjit Baidya (65) of Nagaon, succumbed to his infection today. He was admitted to GMCH. I feel extremely sorry for this loss to the Baidya family. Condolences", the Minister wrote in a tweet, condoling his demise.
With this latest COVID-19 death, the number of casualties in the state has now reached 77. Yesterday, officials reported 6 more fatalities in the state due to the viral infection.
This development comes amid Assam's COVID-19 "explosion", that has seen the number of cases rising at a dramatic rate over the past several weeks.
Yesterday alone, 1,130 cases of the dreaded virus were detected across Assam, out of which 417 cases were from the capital city of Guwahati.
On Friday, swab samples of as many as 16,178 persons were tested for traces of the virus; thus, the 'positivity rate' of the samples was 6.98%. The Government has so far conducted a total of 739,464 COVID-19 tests until Friday, July 24.
On the other hand, 1,062 patients were also sent back home after testing negative for the dreaded virus. Notably, Friday was the third day in a row when over 1,000 COVID-19 positive cases were detected. So far, 21,761 patients (out of a total of 29,921 cases) patients have been discharged after recovering from the deadly virus across Assam.