Recovery relief for Odisha's Sundargarh district amid coronavirus crisis

ROURKELA: Even as the rising COVID-19 positive cases keep Sundargarh district administration on its toes, the high rate of recovery has come as a big relief for residents.

On Wednesday night, three fresh positive cases were reported from Rourkela including two locals from Deluxe Hotel Lane. The third case was a Kerala returnee. The locality in the Steel City has become a cause of concern for the administration as it has reported eight positive cases since June 11. Six of the eight cases belong to a single family.

Sundargarh Collector Nikhil Pawan Kalyan on Thursday said the two locals cases are contacts of a Covid-19 patient. They were kept under institutional quarantine in the BPUT COVID Care Centre and have been shifted to Hi-Tech Covid-19 hospital.  

With this, the total positive cases in Sundargarh rose to 138. However, only 20 cases are active while the rest 118 have recovered. Rourkela ADM Aboli Sunil Naravane attributed the high recovery rate to extensive tests leading to detection of maximum asymptomatic patients and immediate hospitalisation.

Naravane informed that till June 14, the recovery rate was a whopping 88 per cent of the total positive cases in Sundargarh. "Sundargarh’s only testing facility at Rourkela started with around 30 swab sample tests daily. But now, 200-250 tests are taking place daily with fast results," she said.

The ADM further said Rourkela’s testing facility started operation 15 to 30 days after other major laboratories in Odisha and has now become the fifth largest in the State.

The facility is exclusively testing swabs of Sundargarh while other laboratories are receiving samples from various parts of Odisha. Till June 14, more than 10,000 samples have been tested of which above 7,000 belonged to Rourkela.