PANAJI
The young in Salcete took the brunt of the ravaging, double-mutant strain of Coronavirus in the 24 hours between the evenings of Wednesday and Thursday.
A 19-year-old lass from Aquem and two other under-40 women -- a 40-year-old-from from Borda and another 37-year-old from an unspecified locale of Salcete -- were counted among the 36 dead in these 24 hours.
Numbers continued to haunt the State's Covid-19 response teams as a staggering 3019 of the 5910 tested -- a whopping 51-plus per-cent -- being reported positive in the 24-hours of Wednesday-Thursday. Also, the overall pandemic toll in Goa now totals 1,146.
Senior medics involved in Goa's war against the dreaded virus admitted that the above 50 per-cent positivity was a serious cause of concern. No one was however willing to speak on record to The Goan.
The 3019 newly infected led to the 'active cases' in the State aggregating above the 20,000 mark and settling at 20,898 with just 914 cured of the disease, the daily health bulletin said.
According to the daily mortality report of the Directorate of Health Services, the 19-year-old Aquem girl suffered from no co-morbidity but had symptoms for a week.
She succumbed within 24-hours of being admitted, the DHS bulletin said, adding that 10 of the 36 deaths reported on Wednesday-Thursday have similarly occurred within 24 hours of their admission to hospitals.
Meanwhile, with the designated Covid hospitals brimming with patients, authorities at the Goa Medical College and Hospital, Bambolim have begun readying an additional 150 ICU beds at the new super-speciality block.
Health Minister who on Wednesday visited the site and held confabulations with GMC dean Dr Bandekar and others said in a late night tweet that a 20,000 litre capacity tanker of liquid oxygen had arrived for the super-speciality block.
"The tanker with 20,000 litres of oxygen has reached the super-speciality block. We shall start moving patients at the earliest as assured," Rane said in his tweet.
