BHUBANESWAR: With Covid tally breaching 3000 mark on Friday in the state with 3108 new cases, there has been a 30 times growth in infection since March 18, a month ago, on the day the state's daily count was up from double digit to triple with 110 cases.
On Friday, 11 districts reported cases in triple digits including Puri (114). The other 10 districts reported triple digits cases are Balasore (151), Balangir (133), Cuttack (163), Keonjhar (105), Nuapada (140), Sambalpur (153), Bargarh (132), Nabarangpur (156),
Sundargarh (523) and Khurda (534), which took the top spot again. Seventy per cent of Khurda’s cases are from Bhubaneswar.
The 10 western
Odisha districts, where night curfew is in force and where weekend shutdown will begin from Friday night, have together reported 1407 new cases. Malkangiri and Boudh districts only have cases in single digit.
In terms of active cases, Sundargarh has left behind Khurda with 3295 cases. The latter has 2513 active cases out of which Bhubaneswar’s share is 1981.
Khurda’s rural pockets, which were not reporting high number of cases, have started witnessing a spurt. Five of its six blocks have reported 100 plus cases on Friday. Khurda’s Sadar block so far has reported 2167 cases out of which 947 are active cases.
On Friday three more patients died of Covid taking the total deaths to 1938. Sambalpur, Balangir and Ganjam districts reported one death each. Khurda tops the death figure with 341 succumbing to the infection out of total 56729 infected.
The state on Friday conducted test of 31, 891 samples out of which 3108 have returned positive. The rate of positivity is more than 10 per cent. The overall rate of positivity has increased to 3.79 per cent with 95, 28, 182 samples being tested so far and 3, 61, 450 returning positive. With 3, 42, 570 recoveries and 1938 deaths, the state now has 16889 active cases.
Ajjay Parida, director,
Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) said infectivity rate has exponentially increased compared to that of last year. “We suppose based on our research that Odisha now has two strains- UK strain and the double mutant one, but in limited numbers. In Punjab, 90 per cent of the infection is because of UK strain. The genome sequencing has revealed. But whatever is the strain, people need to be far more careful,” he told TOI.