Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday recorded 493 fresh COVID-19 cases with 11 new fatalities in the past 24 hours, taking the coronavirus death toll past 200 in the union territory, officials said.
These details were issued by the Jammu and Kashmir administration late on Wednesday night.
As many as 493 new cases of the contagious disease were detected in the union territory during the past 24 hours taking the COVID tally to 11,666, the officials said.
“Eleven persons, who were COVID-19 positive, have died over the past 24 hours in Jammu and Kashmir,” the officials said, adding, all the deaths took place in the Kashmir valley.
This has taken the death toll due to coronavirus in the union territory to 206 of which 188 deceased were from the Valley and 18 from Jammu region.
While 57 of the new cases were from Jammu region, 436 infected people were from the Valley.
There are 5,123 active cases in the union territory, while 6,337 patients have recovered from the infection.
The cases detected on Wednesday included 57 people who had returned to the union territory recently.
The officials said Srinagar district in central Kashmir recorded the highest number of cases 153 — on Wednesday, followed by 72 in the Anantnag district in the south.
With Wednesday’s fresh cases, the total number of infected people in Jammu and Kashmir has gone up to 11,666.
Meanwhile, earlier during the day the UT’s health department issued an order preventing the government testing laboratories from releasing any data regarding the pandemic to the media.
Financial Commissioner, Health and Medical Education Department, Atal Duloo issued the order directing the government laboratories not to release any details to the press.
“It has been observed that all the institutions at their own are giving official statements to the press / electronic media separately regarding the COVID Lab testing conducted in their respective institutions. As a result, there is every likelihood of confusion on the exact number of total lab tests being carried out, in all the labs of the UT,” the order said.
It said the assignment of press briefing has been given to the Mission Director, National Health Mission, J&K, who after compilation of the reports of all the labs, briefs the media about the daily activities related to COVID-19 including testing.
It is therefore, impressed upon on all the Heads of the Institutions to ensure that no such press briefing on COVID related activities including lab testing are given and the daily reports are submitted to the National Health Mission for its compilation and preparation of the reports, it added.