BHUBANESWAR: Despite a marginal drop in Covid infection count during the last 24 hours mainly due to low testing, Odisha’s daily test positivity rate (TPR) touched 15 per cent (pc) on Monday.
The State reported 10,489 new Covid cases, 688 less than the previous day, pushing the overall infection count to 11,44,401. Three Covid deaths were also reported from Bhubaneswar and Angul in this period taking Covid toll to 8,484. The daily TPR of the State, however, jumped to 15 pc from 14.5 pc on Sunday. This despite around 7,000 less samples tested against the previous day’s 77,120.
Hotspot Khurda reported the highest 2,934 cases followed by 1,447 in Sundargarh, 786 in Cuttack and 433 in Balasore in the last 24 hours. Director of Public Health Dr Niranjan Mishra said the State now has 75,797 active cases, including 24,764 in Khurda, one of the five districts in red zone. Sundargarh, Sambalpur, Cuttack and Balasore are the other four districts that are in this zone for having over 2,500 active cases. Dr Mishra, however, said that despite such a high load of active cases, the growth rate and doubling time of Covid-19 cases have slowed down in the State since the last five days and hospitalisation has also remained considerably low.
“Out of 75,000 plus active cases, only around 1,200 patients are in hospitals which shows that the situation in the State is under control,” he said. The Public Health Director, however, said it would not be appropriate to come to a conclusion on the trend of the infection spread in a short span of time.
Test positivity rate jumps to 15% in Odisha
“The situation needs to be observed for at least a month to predict the future risks,” he said. Dr Mishra said that the Omisure RT-PCR kits will be made available with the district administrations soon for detection of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. Odisha is the first state to place order for five lakh such kits developed by Tata Medical and Diagnostics Ltd in partnership with the Indian Council of Medical Research.