Five-year-old succumbs to coronavirus in Odisha; youngest in state to die of COVID-19

BHUBANESWAR: The novel coronavirus claimed its youngest victim in Odisha as a five-year-old boy of Bhubaneswar, who was also suffering from cerebral palsy with seizure disorder, succumbed along with six others in the state.

Official sources said the minor boy was first rushed to SCB Medical College and Hospital at Cuttack and referred to KIMS Covid Hospital after he tested positive nearly a week back.

Deaths recorded in the last 24 hours also included three men aged 39, 55 and 56 from Ganjam and two others, aged 31 and 72 from Rayagada besides one 45-year-old from Cuttack. Barring one each from Rayagada and Cuttack, the rest had no comorbid conditions.

Another 16-year-old woman from Balasore succumbed to acute lymphocytic leukemia with immune suppression. Though the woman had tested positive, she died due to comorbidities.

With this, the death toll soared to 189 in Odisha. The Health and Family Welfare department, however, attributed death of 35 patients to other underlying diseases.

As many as 1215 new positive cases were also detected from 28 districts taking the total number of infections to 28,107. While 753 patients were in quarantine, 462 were local contacts.

More than 50 per cent (pc) of the cases were from worst hit Ganjam and Khurda with the former registering 332 cases and the latter 312 cases. Gajapati reported 89 cases, followed by Keonjhar (77), Koraput (73) and Cuttack (60).

The positivity rate was above 13 pc for the second consecutive day against the national average of over nine pc. The growth rate was 4.51 pc as against the country average of 3.32 pc. While the per day per million testing in the State was 208, it was 406 in the country.  

However, the number of recoveries rose to 18,061 as 687 more patients from 22 districts recovered on Tuesday. As around 64 pc patients were discharged from hospitals, the number of active patients stood at 9857.  

Meanwhile, three Covid-19 patients, including two women from Ganjam who were treated with plasma at Tata Covid hospital, have recovered from the disease. The first patient to recover from the highly infectious disease was a 48-year-old woman from Cuttack.

Sources said 205 Covid survivors have registered with Ganjam district administration to donate plasma. So far, 46 units of plasma have been collected from donors in the State.