AHMEDABAD: Five out of 506 people who were tested for novel coronavirus ahead of the five-day session of the Gujarat Assembly starting on Monday have been detected with the infection, officials said on Saturday.
COVID-19 tests were conducted on Speaker Rajendra Trivedi and 505 staff members of the Assembly over the past two days, and five had been found to be infected, a release said.
It added that Trivedi had tested negative, while those whose reports returned positive comprised two staff members and three security personnel.
"As per direction of Assembly Speaker Rajendra Trivedi, on September 18 and 19, all Vidhan Sabha officers, employees, security branch personnel, Class III employees, sweepers, police, totaling 506 people, were tested for COVID- 19 through rapid antigen test," it said.
COVID-19 tests will also be conducted on all 172 legislators on Sunday before they are allowed entry into the Assembly building to attend the session, Health Minister Nitin Patel said.
Media personnel covering Assembly proceedings will also have to get COVID-19 negative certificates to gain access to the building, Patel said on Saturday.
The state saw its highest single-day spike of 1,432 coronavirus cases on Saturday, raising the total number of cases to 1,21,930, the state health department said.
With 16 patients succumbing, the COVID-19 death toll in the state rose to 3,305, it said.
The number of recoveries exceeded the number of new cases, with 1,470 patients getting discharged on Saturday.
This raised the total number of recovered cases in the state to 1,02,571, the department said in its release.
With this, the state's recovery rate is now 84.12 percent,the department said in its release.
Surat reported 281 new cases, the highest in the state.
Ahmemdabad followed with 178 new cases.
Rajkot with 151 new cases, Vadodara 138 and Jamnagar with 126 were the three other districts that reported over 100 new cases.
Among other districts, Mehsana reported 69 new cases, Banaskantha and Gandhinagar 44 each, Bhavnagar 42, Junagadh 35, Panchmahal 30, Amreli 29, Morbi 28, Kutch 26, Bharuch 24, Patan 23, Mahisagar 16, Dahod and Gir Somnath 15 each, Devbhumi Dwarka 14, Sabarkantha 13, Kheda, Narmada and Surendranagar 12 each, Anand and Tapi ten each.
Surat also accounted for the highest five of the 16 deaths reported in the state.
Ahmedabad reported three fatalities, Bhavnagar and Vadodara two each, and Amreli, Gandhinagar, Kutch and Rajkot one each,the department said.
The number of active cases in Gujarat now stands at 16,054, out of which the condition of 97 patients is critical, the department said.
As many as 61,432 tests were conducted for COVID-19 in the state over the last 24 hours, at the rate of 945.11 tests per day per million population.
Gujarat COVID-19 figures are as follows: Positive cases 1,21,930, new cases 1,432, deaths 3,305, discharged 1,02,571, active cases 16,054, and people tested so far 37,39,782.