Odisha reports 1,000+ Covid-19 cases for second consecutive day

A day after Odisha reported more than 1,000 Covid-19 cases, it again reported a similar number of cases including Covid hotspot of Ganjam and Khurda, but state government continued to insist that the situation in Odisha was better than other states.

The 1,264 positive cases that the state reported in last 24 hours was its highest single day surge so far taking the total to 21,099. It was the second time when it reported more than 1,000 cases on a single day. While the state took 114 days to record its first 10,000 cases, it took just 15 days to register the next 10,000 cases.

The spike of last 2 days has pushed the daily growth rate to 6 though it had remained under 5 for last 12 days. The surge in cases and comparative lower recovery meant the recovery rate has now come down to 65 per cent from more than 70% a week ago.

Of the 1,264 cases, 540 were reported from Ganjam district alone where over 99 per cent of the cases were reported from local community while in Khurda district a record 137 cases were reported fuwlled by large number of infections in a flour mill. In Bhubaneswar city under Khurda district, 61 workers in a flour mill have tested positive in last 2 days.

Making light of the surging cases, additional chief secretary of health department, PK Mohapatra said the numbers are rising as the government was aggressive in testing. “No State has been able to reverse the trend of the rising number of cases. We are chasing the virus from house to house. That is why cases are increasing in Odisha. The Covid recovery rate in she State is 65% and case fatality rate is 0.54%. We have 37.20 per cent of beds in Covid treatment facilities across Odisha are occupied. The district collectors have been asked to make an assessment of their medical infrastructure requirement for next 5 months,” said Mohapatra, urging for home isolation of asymptomatic patients both in rural and urban areas as over 70% cases reported in Odisha are asymptomatic.

The health secretary said Odisha government has a stock of 4 lakh antigen kits and enough stock of PPEs, sanitizers and medicine for at least four months. “We are conducting RT-PCR tests in 19 labs and would add 6 more labs. The focus is on both RT-PCR and antigen tests,” he said.

In Bhubaneswar, the civic body said there was little risk of community transmission of the virus as the first round of sero-surveillance showed community level exposure to SARS Cov2 very low. Of the 951 samples drawn by ICMR in Bhubaneswar as part of its sero survey, only 1.42 per cent had exposure to the virus. “This implies that large scale transmission has probably not occured in the city. Hence it ethical not to pass on or disseminate panic messages. But a large majority of the population is still susceptible to the infection,” said a BMC official.