A 60-year-old man died of Covid- 19, while 18 fresh cases were detected in Jammu and Kashmir on Monday, taking the death toll to 10 and tally of positive cases to 879 in the Union Territory. The man who died had already lost his 34-year-old son to the respiratory disease four days ago. This is the first case of two Covid-19 deaths from a family in the UT. An Old City resident in Srinagar, the 60-year-old was a cancer patient and was tested positive for Covid-19 on May 8, a day after his son had died on May 7, during his stay at the oncology department of a super specialty hospital in Srinagar. He was currently being treated for the virus at Chest Diseases Hospital here. The man’s 34-year-old son had died after contracting the disease while attending his father at the super speciality hospital. “The elderly man died because of Covid-19, but he was a stage-four pancreatic cancer,” said Saleem Tak, CD Hospital medical superintendent. This was ninth death in Kashmir where four people had died in Srinagar alone, while one person has lost life to the virus in Jammu. Meanwhile, of the 18 fresh infections, 12 were reported from Kashmir division-Kulgam and Baramulla districts-where the tally has risen to 802 and six people have tested positive in Jammu and Kathua districts. Officials said 44 more patients have recovered and were discharged from various hospitals in Kashmir. So far, 372 in Kashmir and 55 in Jammu division have recovered. At present, active cases in Kashmir stand at 421 and 21 in Jammu. Till date, 95,419 people in contact with suspected cases have been put under surveillance- 22,708 in home quarantine, 190 in hospital quarantine and 10,188 under home surveillance. Besides, 61,881 people have completed their 28-day surveillance period. On Sunday, 25 new cases of Covid-19 were reported in the UT. A 34-year-old man from Old City had died due to the disease on May 7, while an elderly woman from Srinagar’s Batpora in Dal Lake area had succumbed earlier this month.
