Assam reported one death of Delta Plus variant of COVID-19. Health Minister Keshab Mahanta said that the delta variant was found in 77 percent of the samples tested during the month of April and May this year.

Since the outbreak of the second wave of the pandemic, 300 random samples of COVID-19 patients for the three months of April, May and June have been sent for testing at the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics at Kalyani in West Bengal, the minister said.

"We have got the results for the months of April and May and it has been found that 77 percent of these have the delta strain while 23 per cent are the Kappa strain", he said. The minister said that one person has died of the Delta variant in the state so far but he did not give any further detail on this. Meanwhile, the state government on Friday decided that those who have taken both doses of vaccination will not have to undergo COVID-19 testing at the airports and railway stations, Health Minister Keshab Mahanta said.

It may be mentioned that Assam on Friday reported 2,793 new cases of coronavirus and 26 deaths.

The active tally in the state stood at 28,457. The positivity rate currently is at 2.01 per cent.

Meanwhile, 3,977 patients have recuperated from the deadly virus yesterday in Assam.

The new cases were detected out of 1,39,105 tests conducted today. The districts with the high caseload are Sonitpur (296), Golalghat (241), Jorhat (188) and Biswanath (174).

The district-wise deaths are: Dibrugarh (4), Kamrup Rural (3), Goalpara (2), Kamrup Metro (2), Karimganj (2), Lakhimpur (2), Udalguri (2), Cachar (1), Chirang (1), Dhubri (1), Hojai (1), Jorhat (1), Nagaon (1), Nalbari (1), Sivasagar (1), Sonitpur (1).

The death count in Assam has touched 4,370 with a case fatality rate of 0.88 per cent, while the total recoveries have increased to 4,62,307 with a recovery rate of 93.12 per cent.

The overall caseload of the state stood at 4,96,481.

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