Gujarat minister tests positive for COVID-19, hospitalised

The BJP MLA from Valsad district is the first state minister to have contracted the viral infection  

Ahmedabad: A Gujarat minister has tested positive for the coronavirus (COVID-19), state deputy chief minister Nitin Patel said on Wednesday (July 8).

"The minister has been admitted to a hospital in Ahmedabad after he tested positive for coronavirus," Patel, who holds charge of the health department, said ahead of the state Cabinet meeting in Gandhinagar.

The BJP MLA from Valsad district is the first state minister to have contracted the viral infection. On Tuesday, a senior Congress leader from Gujarat battling COVID-19 was put on ventilator support.

A BJP MLA from Surat and a Congress legislator from Banaskantha district also tested positive for coronavirus on Tuesday.

On July 7, Gujarat reported its highest ever single-day spike of 778 coronavirus positive cases. Seventeen more patients died due to the infection, five of them in Ahmedabad, the state health department said.

The state reported the deaths of 17 more COVID-19 patients, raising the fatalities to 1,979.

Also, 421 patients were discharged from hospitals, taking the number of recovered cases in Gujarat to 26,744, the health department said in a release.