COVID-19 weekly briefing: CTA reports 82 positive cases, 1 death in the past week
DHARAMSALA, 8 Oct: A total of 82 exiled Tibetans in India have tested positive in the past week, the COVID- 19 Task Force of the Central Tibetan Administration(CTA) said.
“The cases were reported in the last seven days after testing 381 Tibetans from 16 Tibetan settlements in India and 3 from Tibetan settlements in Nepal,” Dr Tsering Tsamchoe said during the committee’s weekly briefing.
Out of those who tested positive, the eldest among them was 93 while the youngest was 4 years old. The committee also reported one death due to the COVID -19 infection.
The tally now stands at 6,601, COVID-19 positive cases to date out of which 6,291 have recovered with 159 active cases and 151 deaths.
The committee stated that Dharamsala jurisdiction along with Bylakuppee and Mundgod Tibetan settlement still remains the hot spot of the COVID-19 cases among the exiled Tibetan community.
Dr Tsamchoe further informed that a total of 342 exiled Tibetans from 12 Tibetan settlements in India and 1 from Nepal were under quarantine this week. While 111 of them are under home quarantine, another 231 are under institutional quarantine.
The committee declared the vaccination rate of the exiled Tibetans in India at 93.60 per cent.
A total of 39,124 Tibetans in India have received both the dose while 11,926 Tibetans have received the first dose.
The vaccination rate of Tibetans in Nepal stands at 51.41 per cent. A total of 3,666 Tibetans are fully vaccinated while another 534 have received their first jab.
Additionally, the committee said it has distributed 52,966 units of Sorig immune boosters to date among Tibetans and that it’s the Mental health section has counselled 15 Tibetans through phone calls in the past week.
Though the cases are declining across the world and in India in particular, With the festival seasons around the corner, Delek hospital’s Dr Namdol from the committee urged the Tibetans to not let their guards down and continue to exercise caution, avoid social gatherings and crowds while urging everyone eligible to get inoculated.
Since its outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019, the pandemic has infected 236,772,925 people and killed 4,834,557 people globally according to data from Johns Hopkins University. As the cases have started subsiding in India, India has now moved from 2nd to 4th country worst hit by the pandemic with 33,915,569 active cases and 450,127deaths.