The number of COVID-19 positive cases in the northeast has almost quadrupled in a little more than a fortnight since May 2.
What has intrigued the doctors and the officials is that many of the new cases do not have any travel history besides maintaining minimum or no contact with people who had tested positive.
The number of cases in the region was 61 till May 1 midnight. By Sunday, it increased to 287. Three of them — two in Assam and one in Meghalaya — died and a person each migrated to Bihar and West Bengal.
Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday said a 9-year-old boy who returned from Delhi with his parents had tested positive and was being treated at the Jorhat Medical College and Hospital. He is the youngest to have tested positive in the State after two 16-year-old girls, one of whom died.
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The boy’s case, along with that of a 28-year-old who came from Chennai to Cachar district, took the number of positive cases in Assam to 97. But Tripura led the table with 167 cases while Meghalaya and Manipur took the third and fourth spots with 13 and seven cases respectively.
The bulk of Tripura’s 159 cases had been reported from two BSF battalion headquarters . They include more than a dozen family members of the personnel.
The region, according to data provided by the Health Ministries of the affected States, has 158 active cases — 101 in Tripura, 52 in Assam, five in Manipur and one in Meghalaya.
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The rest of the States — Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim — have not recorded any fresh cases.
