Odisha registered a record single-day spike with the detection of 173 new COVID-19 cases pushing its tally to 2,781 on Saturday when the State began enforcing a weekend shutdown in 11 districts.
As many as 150 of the new cases were detected in quarantine centres set up at the gram panchayat level, and the remaining 23 were local contacts in the community, officials said. The number of active cases stood at 1,055.
A total of 1,72,621 samples had been tested in the State till Friday.
A total number of 112 COVID-19 patients were also discharged from hospitals on Saturday, taking the recoveries in the State to 1,716. Out of the total COVID-19 positive patients, 10 had died so far because of COVID-19, with two other fatalities attributed to other reasons, the State Health Department maintained.
The weekend shutdown is being enforced in 11 migration-prone districts on all Saturdays and Sundays from June 6 to make people stay at home to reduce their exposure to the novel coronavirus. Night curfew continues to remain in force from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. in the entire State.
The districts in which the shutdown and night curfew continue simultaneously have reported about 100 or more cases so far. Most of those testing positive in these districts were migrant workers who had returned from other States since the nationwide lockdown started in March.
While Ganjam district reported the highest number of 597 cases till Saturday, Jajpur had recorded 253 cases, Khordha 226, Balasore 190, Cuttack 167, Kendrapara 163, Bhadrak 140, Bolangir 116, Puri 100, Jagatsinghpur 87 and Nayagarh 83.
Meanwhile, the State government’s chief spokesperson for COVID-19 Subroto Bagchi reminded the people of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s words of caution that the month of June would be crucial in the State’s fight against COVID-19.
More than five lakh Odia migrant workers have returned to the State during the past few weeks, and how many of them have been affected by the pandemic would be known over the next two weeks, said Mr. Bagchi.
Stating that unlocking of the restrictions did not mean that the pandemic had subsided, Mr. Bagchi said that every member of each family would have to maintain self-restraint in order to face the challenge in the pandemic’s fourth stage in the State this month.
Stating that COVID-19 infection may reach its fourth stage in Odisha in the current month, Mr. Bagchi said that adherence to quarantine guidelines, COVID-19 protocol and self-restraint were the only means to fight this infection.
As many as 16,799 temporary medical centres have been set up in 6,798 gram panchayats of the State for institutional quarantine of the Odia people returning from other States.