Coronavirus affects 1,741 people in Odisha, claims 2 lives 

BHUBANESWAR: Odisha’s Covid-19 tally breached 3.5 lakh mark on Monday with 1,741 more persons testing positive for the virus in the last 24 hours. Two persons, both men and aged 24 and 40 respectively, from Nuapada district also died of the disease taking the death toll to 1,928. While the 24-year-old with no comorbidities succumbed during treatment, health officials said the 40-year-old was also suffering from hypertension.

The new cases, detected from all 30 districts, is the highest single-day spike recorded in the State in the last five and half months as the previous spike of 1,793 cases was reported on October 23 last year. Monday’s infection count was around 26 per cent more compared to the previous day’s caseload of 1,379. 
Health and Family Welfare officials said the new cases increased Odisha’s Covid tally to 3,51,302. The State has been registering more than 1,000 cases of coronavirus infection for the last four days. 

The infection count reported in the last 24 hours included 1,015 new cases from quarantine centres and 726 cases detected during contact tracing. Sundargarh continued to remain the Covid hotspot with 268 new cases, while the daily caseload also crossed 200-mark in Khurda. Balasore reported 158 new cases, followed by Sambalpur at 121 and Kalahandi at 114. The infection count in Cuttack, Puri, Bargarh, Nuapada, Keonjhar, and Balangir also remained between 50 and 100. The test positivity rate rose to 5.78 per cent as the number of tests came down.

As many as 30,097 tests were conducted during the period. Odisha now has 8,721 active cases, while discharge of another 538 patients on Monday has pushed the recovery tally to 3,40,600. The State government, meanwhile, has intensified surveillance of people coming from outside states and has asked all the hospitals to keep Covid facilities ready to deal with the situation.

VIRUS STATS

Odisha’s current Covid tally - 3,51,302

Over 1,000 cases reported in last four days

Hotspots - Sundargarh and Khurda

Test positivity stands at - 5.78 %