Situation may stabilise in Assam by June 10: Himanta Biswa Sarma

GUWAHATI: After breaching the 1,000-mark on Friday, Assam 's count for Covid-19 cases and the number of recovered patients surged ahead on Saturday with the count reaching 1,015 cases.


A day after he pointed out that Assam was ready to return to normal life in a staggered manner under Lockdown 5.0, state health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday said, "The number of incoming people is coming down.

I believe the situation will stabilise by June 10."

In line with Assam's proposal to continue the night curfew, but from 9 pm to 5 am, instead of 7 pm to 5 am, the Centre's guidelines for the next lockdown from June 1 to 30 has made the modification for the entire country. Himanta had said the night curfew was helping significantly in checking the spread of the virus.

While 128 new cases were added, the day saw the largest number of discharged people as 38 patients tested negative for Covid-19 twice and subsequently returned home. The state health minister said 14 of them have been discharged from Silchar Medical College and Hospital, 11 from Mahendra Mohan Choudhury Hospital, eight from Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Hospital, three from Jorhat Medical College and Hospital and two from Guwahati Medical College and Hospital .

Himanta said, "An average of 100 positive cases have been reported in the last few days and that is because we are doing more tests. Yesterday we did 8,000 tests and saw the biggest spike of 177 positive cases but others who tested negative are free to leave the institutional quarantine for the remaining part of the 14 days home quarantine. More tests means we can free our institutional quarantine facilities faster," he said.

"Once we go return to our villages, the home quarantine either at the community hall or own house will be extremely crucial. A majority of the patients are young and they can recover easily, but when the aged people are infected, the path to recovery becomes difficult. So we do not want to spread the virus to our aged elders once we get back home," Himanta said.

"There is no alternative except the awareness of people. So I request everyone to remain alert and inform the government if anyone skips quarantine," he added.