SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – One in five inmates of India’s largest criminal tested positive for coronavirus, the government said Friday, as the Ministry of Fitness reported a build-up of more than 60,000 cases across the country for the third day in a row.
India is the third most affected country in the world, the United States and Brazil, with more than 2.4 million cases of coronavirus, according to a Reuters count.
And the numbers are expected to rise in the coming weeks as infections spread deeper into the vast interior.
Authorities at the criminal power plant in Srinagar, Kashmir’s main city, said they were going to move some criminals after 102 of the 480 tested positive.
“We are very careful and all new participants are tested and quarantined for two weeks,” V.K. Singh, the additional director general of Kashmir prisons, told Reuters.
The Kashmir Valley has reported more than 20,000 cases, of which only about 5,500 other people are infected lately.
In the clutches of a decades-long insurgency, Kashmir is claimed entirely through India and its neighbor, Pakistan, but ruled by all.
India-controlled Kashmir has been the subject of a cycle of blockades due to coronavirus meals since last March. But cases continue to escalae, putting pressure on medical infrastructure, doctors said.
Dr. Nisarul Hassan, an associate professor at Government Medical College in Srinagar, which has about 2,200 beds, 350 for PATIENTS with COVID-19, said resources were depleted.
“Our hospitals are full of patients with COVID-19. We lack oxygen beds,” he said, “patients have to wait for the fans because there are enough.”
Like many other Indian cities, the Srinagar administration has also changed some buildings to transitional services for coronavirus, adding 3,000 beds, with 2,000 beds in preparation.
Reporting through Fayaz Bukhari at SRINAGAR; Written through Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing via Nick Macfie
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