Ranchi, Aug 11 (IANS): Amid the rising Coronavirus cases and deaths across the world, a heart-warming story has emerged from coal city Dhanbad where a man was reunited with wife and child after 20 years.

Gajadhar Sonar, a resident of Belgarh village of Koderma left home 20 years ago after a quarrel with his wife and was living in Jharia Liloripathra of Dhanbad district under an assumed name, Satyanarayan. However, with the spread of Covid-19, when Gajadhar Sonar had a cold and fever, his neighbours enquired about his family members. The neighbours suspected him to be Covid-19 positive. When Gajadhar did not reveal details about his family members, his neighbours informed the police.

During interrogation by the police, Gajadhar gave out the details and Dhanbad police contacted their Koderma counterparts after which Gajadhar's wife Aneeta Devi and son Chandrashekhar Kumar reached Dhanbad district on Monday. The couple finally met after 20 years and Gajadhar's wife took him back to his home in Koderma.

On Monday, a total of 531 fresh cases of Coronavirus were detected across all the 24 districts of Jharkhand following which the overall tally of Covid-19 patients reached 18,786 in the state.

In the last 24 hours more than 700 Covid-19 cases have been detected taking the total number to 19,000.

As per the information provided by the health department the number of active cases in the state are 9,010 while deaths caused by the pandemic stands at 189.

Despite the rampant rise in Coronavirus cases across the state the recovery rate of patients has improved significantly and has once again gone above the 50 per cent mark and currently stands at 51.88 per cent.

So far 3,93,472 samples have been collected in the state, out of which 3,87,184 have been tested and 3,68,398 have turned out to be negative.