3,108 new cases in 24 hrs as state sees 30-fold rise

BHUBANESWAR: The state’s single-day Covid tally breached the 3,000-mark on Friday with 3,108 fresh cases, registering a 30-time growth from 110 cases on March 18. For the first time this year, the daily count had touched triple digits then.
On Friday, eleven districts reported cases in triple digits. These included Puri (114), Balasore (151), Balangir (133), Cuttack (163), Keonjhar (105), Nuapada (140), Sambalpur (153), Bargarh (132), Nabarangpur (156), Sundargarh (523) and Khurda (534), which took the top spot again.About 70% of Khurda’s cases were from Bhubaneswar.
The 10 western Odisha districts, where night curfew is in force and where weekend shutdown will begin from Friday night, together accounted for 1,407 new cases. Malkangiri and Boudh saw single-digit fresh infection count.
As far as the active case count is concerned, Sundargarh has left behind Khurda with 3,295 cases. The latter has 2,513 active cases, out of which Bhubaneswar’s share is 1,981.
Khurda’s rural pockets, which were not reporting a high number of cases, have started witnessing a spurt. Five of its six blocks recorded more than 100 cases on Friday. Khurda’s Sadar block has reported 2,167 cases so far, of which 947 are active ones.
On Friday, three more patients died of Covid, taking the total number of such deaths to 1,938. Sambalpur, Balangir and Ganjam districts reported one death each. Khurda tops the death toll with 341 succumbing to the infection out of 56,729 Covid-affected.
The state on Friday tested 31,891 samples, out of which the results of 3,108 returned positive. The rate of positivity is more than 10%. The overall rate of positivity has increased to 3.79% with 95,28,182 samples having been tested so far and 3,61,450 returning positive.
With 3,42,570 recoveries and 1,938 deaths, the state now has 16,889 active cases. Ajjay Parida, director, Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) said, “The infectivity rate has exponentially increased from last year.
Based on our research, we can say that Odisha now has two strains — the UK strain and the double mutant one — but in limited numbers. In Punjab, 90% of the infection is because of the UK strain, genome sequencing has revealed. But whatever may be the strain, people need to be far more careful now.