The active caseload in Jharkhand increased to 21,098 over the past fortnight with 5,081 new Covid-19 cases detected on Saturday.

While state’s health minister Banna Gupta had tested positive two days ago, chief minister Hemant Soren was lucky to have tested negative on Saturday though 18 others at the CM House, besides Soren’s wife and two sons, tested positive.

A fortnight ago, only 55 new cases were detected on December 24 (2021) and the active caseload in the state was 273 that day.

But the number of new cases increased 92 times to 5,081 on Saturday and the caseload 77 times to 21,098 while the positivity rate also went up from 0.16 per cent to 6.98 per cent during the period.

The number of new cases detected in Ranchi district also went up from 113 on December 24 to 1,731 on Saturday and it continued to have maximum caseload among the districts of the state, though its share of the state’s total active caseload slid a little during the period.

While Ranchi district shared 41.39 per cent of the total active caseload of the state on December 24, its share was found to be 40.45 per cent on Saturday.

“It takes time to ascertain but the indications like sudden spurt in infection rate suggests so,” Manoj Kumar, head of microbiology department of Ranchi’s Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences replied when asked if there was any confirmed case of infection by omicron variant in the state.

“Now that the infection has spread so much over such a large area which is an indication of a pandemic situation, the third wave may have arrived,” he opined when asked.

Meanwhile, the state intensified testing of Covid suspects over the past fortnight, from 32,799 tests on December 24 to 72,742 on Saturday.

But the target of fully vaccinating the entire adult population, estimated at 2.41 crore, by January 15 did not look like achievable as only 49 per cent achievement was recorded till Saturday.