Srinagar, April 7: Asserting that COVID-19 patients often test positive for quite a few days as the viral load reduces, former chief minister Omar Abdullah on Wednesday said that his father and National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah is responding well to treatment and does not require any supplementary oxygen support.

Omar, who is the vice-president of the National Conference (NC), was responding to reports that Dr. Farooq has once again tested positive for COVID-19

“This is nothing unusual. COVID patients often test positive for quite a few days as the viral load reduces. The important thing is he is responding well to treatment & does not require any supplementary oxygen support,” he wrote on the micro-blogging site Twitter.

Dr. Abdullah had tested positive for COVID-19 on March 30, weeks after he got the first dose of vaccine against the virus at SKIMS in Srinagar. Later, he was admitted to the S K Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) following the advice of doctors to enable better monitoring.

On Sunday, Lt Governor Manoj Sinha visited SKIMS, Soura, and enquired about the health of Dr. Farooq Abdullah. Meanwhile, NC on Tuesday organized prayers across Jammu and Kashmir for the early recovery of Dr. Abdullah.

The Jammu and Kashmir government on Tuesday suspended all ‘close contact sports’ activities as a precautionary measure in view of the surge in COVID-19 infection in the Union Territory. This decision came, a day after all educational institutes, including government and private schools, up to class 12th were closed in view of rising in COVID-19 cases in the Union Territory.

Amid a spike in COVID cases, Jammu and Kashmir government last month classified Srinagar as an orange zone while all other districts have been declared as green zones, whereas Lakhanpur was declared as a containment zone and Jawahar Tunnel area on either side as Red zones. As many as 561 new positive cases of novel Coronavirus, including 384 from the Kashmir division and 177 from the Jammu division, were reported on Tuesday when two people died due to COVID-19 in the UT.(UNI)