Biggest single-day spike of 162 COVID-19 cases in J-K; tally touches 1,921

Srinagar, May 27 () Jammu and Kashmir witnessed the biggest single-day spike in COVID-19 cases on Wednesday with 162 people testing positive for the disease, raising the tally to 1,921, officials said.

The union territory also reported two fresh coronavirus-related deaths, they said.

"A total of 162 new positive cases of coronavirus were detected in the union territory on Wednesday. This is the biggest single-day increase in positive cases," the officials said.

While 38 of these cases are from Jammu, 124 are from Kashmir, they said.

The officials said the total number of cases in the UT has now reached 1,921.

"Of these, 1,535 are in Kashmir and 386 in Jammu region," they said.

The number of active cases has now gone up to 1,041 -- 288 in Jammu and 753 in Kashmir.

In a worrying development, some of those who tested positive on Wednesday had no contact history. Many of them are young women in their early 20s, the officials said.

A 55-year-old man, who had tested positive for COVID-19, died at a hospital here on Wednesday.

The man, hailing from the Fateh Kadal area of the city, died at the Chest Diseases (CD) hospital here, officials said.

They said the patient was shifted to the CD hospital from SICU SMHS on May 18 as an operated case of exploratory laparotomy with appendicectomy after testing positive for coronavirus.

Exploratory laparotomy is surgery to open up the abdomen to find the cause of problems such as belly pain or bleeding that testing could not diagnose. Appendicectomy is a surgical procedure to remove the appendix from the abdomen

The patient's health was improving and was hemodynamically stable and maintaining saturation without oxygen, the officials said.

However, he developed sudden cardiac arrest around 4 pm on Wednesday, they added.

The man was immediately intubated, coupled to a ventilator and resuscitated but he developed another cardiac arrest after which he could not be revived, the officials said.

The other death took place in Anantnag district but officials did not give any details about the deceased.