BHUBANESWAR: Even as new Covid-19 cases are on the decline, the State reported the highest fatalities in August. With the announcement of 53 deaths on Wednesday, the cumulative death toll soared to 8,022, of which 2,056 were recorded last month.
The August toll was more than the official death count of the entire first wave when 1,906 fatalities were recorded.
With this, the long pending audit of Covid deaths has been completed. The state registered 6081 deaths in last five months. Altogether 1,903 deaths were reported in July, 1,272 in June, 737 in May and 113 in April.
As many as 29,764 cases were detected from 20.36 lakh samples in August pushing the tally to 10,08,469. While the overall test positivity rate (TPR) dropped to 1.4 per cent (pc), the case fatality rate (CFR) rose close to seven pc from around 0.5 pc in May.
Health department sources said that maximum deaths were reported from Khurda, Cuttack, Sundargarh, Balasore, Angul, Mayurbhanj, Jagatsinghpur, Puri, Sambalpur, Bargarh, Kalahandi, Rayagada and Jharsuguda, last month.
According to an analysis, an average 960 cases and 66 deaths per day were added to the State tally. With 36,407 people recovering last month, the total recoveries went up to 9,93,235.
Of the 719 new cases detected in last 24 hours, 125 were children and adolescents below 18 years. The infection among the children has increased from around 12 pc to 17.4 pc.
Khurda district recorded the highest 259 cases, including 171 from Bhubaneswar, followed by Cuttack (89). Gajapati and Nuapada districts did not register any fresh infection and 13 districts reported cases in single digit.
An eight-year-old girl from Jharsuguda was among 53 patients succumbing to the infection. The maximum 19 deaths were from Khurda, six each from Keonjhar and Jagatsinghpur, and five each from Cuttack and Puri.
Additional Chief Secretary of Health PK Mohapatra said the audit of backlog death data has been completed. "The fresh Covid deaths will be announced now onwards. We are focusing more on the screening of paediatric population apart from maintaining the daily testing target," he added.