Starting April 28, the Assam government will further relax inter-district travel curbs for three days. State health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday said that the government will allow two-way travel for people with own vehicles to pick up children and family members, and return. From Saturday, the government had opened a three-day window for private vehicles to travel one-way provided they had permission from the district administration. Only two persons will be allowed at a time, however — a driver and a passenger in the back seat. Sarma said over 34,500 people had applied for permit. The state has had 35 positive cases of Covid-19 and one death so far. On Saturday, the government had begun a three-day exercise to transport people stranded across the state to destinations within the state in Assam State Transport Corporation (ASTC) buses. “Nearly 41,000 people had registered themselves on our helpline numbers (for this scheme),” sadi transport minister Chandra Mohan Patowary said on Sunday.

The number of deaths due to Covid-19 in Gujarat doubled over the last week to 151 on Sunday. Over the same period, the number of positive cases grew by 70% and crossed the 3,000 mark.

On April 20, the state had recorded 1939 cases and 71 deaths. On April 26, the number of cases stood at 3301.

The state government said the increase in number of cases is due to aggressive testing and that it was on expected lines. On the deaths, the government said that 47% of the dead were 60 years of age and suffered from comorbidities that reduced their immunity.

On Sunday, the government also rolled back its decision to open shops in non-containment zones across Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot. These four regions account for almost 90% of the cases in the state.

Gujarat is among the states worst hit by the disease. Only three of the 33 districts in the state are free of the disease.The central government had earlier sent its teams to the state to assess the situation and give recommendations to the state government to effectively contain the spread of the disease.

According to the health department data, an average of four Covid-19 deaths have been reported from the state every day since March 22.

The highest number deaths have so far were reported from Ahmedabad (104) followed by Surat (15) and Vadodra (12). Junagadh, Amreli, and Devbhoomi Dwarka remain unaffected.

Jayanti Ravi, principal secretary (health) attributed the spike in cases to aggressive testing and that there was no reason to worry. “Around 47% of the dead were over 60 years of age, 41% were between 40 and 60 years, 10% were between 20 and 40 years,” Ravi said “We have a total of 21 laboratories, government and private, operational with a capacity of 3,000 tests per day.” She said the government had conducted 3,028 antibody tests.

“The laboratories are providing results as quickly as possible in order to trace the affected people and get them treated. Gujarat is at par with other states of India and the world in lab testing and tracing of affected people. Ahmedabad has tested 2,701 samples per million population. Gujarat’s testing per million population is 721 compared to the national average of 392,” Ravi said.