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GUWAHATI: Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that he would stop giving Coronavirus updates through his Twitter handle as the number of COVID cases in Assam has substantially dropped and the recovery rate has fallen below 0.5%.
Taking to his Twitter handle, the minister wrote, "For 270+ days, I've shared #Covid updates. With a positivity rate of below 0.5%, & considering life is back to pre-Covid times including opening of schools & colleges, I shall discontinue the same from today except for special information. Now updates will come from @nhm_assam."
Further the minister stated that going forward all the updates related to COVID-19 will now come from the official handle of National Health Mission (NHM), Assam.
Meanwhile, Assam's COVID-19 tally rose to 2,16,251 with 40 more people testing positive for the infection, while four fresh fatalities pushed the death toll to 1,049, a bulletin issued by the state government's National Health Mission said on Saturday.
Four persons succumbed to the disease since Friday, taking the total death toll to 1049 with the current death rate at 0.48 per cent while 1,347 COVID positive patients have died for other reasons.
Forty new cases have been reported out of 15,429 tests conducted at a positivity rate of 0.26 per cent, it said.
Eighty two more patients recovered from COVID-19 on Friday, taking the total number of recoveries to 2,11,989. The COVID-19 recovery rate in the state is currently 98 per cent.
Of the total 2,16,251 COVID-19 cases, currently 3,213 are active cases, it said.
The state has so far tested 60,14,286 samples for COVID-19, including both RT-PCR and Rapid Antigen Test.
National Health Mission (NHM) Mission Director Lakshmanan S said the Health Department does not want to leave any stone unturned to find out any lacuna in the system before administering the vaccine to the people of the state.
"Today, we are having the dry run at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, Sonapur Civil Hospital and Khanapara State Dispensary. This is going to be a continuous process and we will be having dry runs till the actual vaccine comes to us," he added.