BHUBANESWAR: The Covid-19 tally of the State Capital inched closer to 17,000-mark after detection of 342 more cases in the last 24 hours. As many as 244 cases related to local transmission and 98 cases linked to quarantine were reported in the city, pushing the total number of cases to 16,933. The city also recorded 387 cases of recoveries, bringing down the number of active cases to 4,568.
Despite recording less than 400 cases for the third consecutive day, the Capital City continued to report more number of daily cases than any other city in the State. Even no other district, except Cuttack which reported 357 confirmed infections, was close to the city in terms of daily spike of cases on the day.
The cases reported in Bhubaneswar in the last 24 hours accounted for 66 per cent of the total infections recorded in Khurda district.Though the increasing number of tests, which has now remained 3,500 to 4,000 per day, has helped the city in detecting more number of suspected cases, blatant violation of Covid-19 norms and inadequate enforcement by the BMC have led to spread of infection manifold. The city, which had 5,119 cases till August 15, has added around 11,000 cases in one month.
An official from the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), however, attributed the upward trend to lifting of restrictions which were in place to check spread of the virus. After the State Government lifted the restrictions following Centre’s Unlock guidelines, the infection in the city has spread uncontrollably. It would be difficult to contain the spread as long as citizens are voluntarily not following the social distancing norms and Covid guidelines, the official said.
State reports 3,645 cases as tests decline
Bhubaneswar: The State may have reported fewer new cases than the previous day’s count, but health experts are worried over declining tests. The State recorded 3,645 new infections and eight deaths as the number of tests once again reduced by over 15 per cent in last 24 hours. With this the tally touched 1,58,650 and death toll 698. While as many as 49,393 samples were tested on Sunday when Odisha had reported its biggest single day spike of 4198 cases and 11 deaths, 43,940 tests, including 7,123 through RT-PCR, were conducted on Monday. Of the fresh cases, 1,494 patients contracted the disease locally while 2,151 were in quarantine. Though there is a little drop in number of cases, health experts believed it was due to reduced tests.