Anantnag: Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed no Covid related death in over a week now, after a tumultuous January and equally harrowing February, as both the number of new infections as well as the number of active positive cases are rapidly coming down.
The last Covid related death in the Union Territory was reported on February 23. “No one has died of Covid since, which is really heartening and an indication that we are probably moving toward the end of the pandemic,” a senior official, privy to data on Covid-19, told Kashmir Reader.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Jammu and Kashmir has reported 4,53,134 infections and 4,748 deaths caused by it – 2,87,112 infections and 2,423 deaths in Kashmir division, and 1,66,022 infections and 2,325 deaths in Jammu division.
“This year’s January saw a steep spike in both the number of cases and deaths. A total of 146 people died in the month even as 94,135 people were infected,” the official informed.
February went better but the union territory still lost 74 people to the Covid infection, while the number of fresh infections topped 17,500. “Which amounts to a total of 220 deaths and over one lakh fresh infections,” the official said of the cumulative figure.
Things however started to ease out in the last week of February, when the infections started to drop drastically and no new deaths were reported from anywhere in the union territory.
“The daily infections tumbled to two digits towards the end of February and there has been a consistent drop in the numbers ever since,” the official said. In the first three days of March, only 137 new infections have been reported.
What the union territory is also making a progress on is the number of recoveries that are being reported. As of March 3, only 264 people remain actively positive for the virus across Jammu and Kashmir – 199 of them in Kashmir division and the rest in Jammu.
“We are making steady progress vis-a-vis the hospitalisations as well as daily positivity rate in the UT,” the official said, adding that the hospitalisation rate is now below what it was at the beginning of the year.
At present, only 12 of the 4,838 Covid dedicated beds remain occupied across the union territory, which amounts to a hospitalisation rate of a meagre 0.25 percent. Also, the daily positivity rate on March 3 was only 0.09 percent, way below what it was at the beginning of the third wave.
“We might be finally getting to the end of the pandemic but we need to take precautions, now more than ever, to curb the spread,” the official said.

Suhail A Shah