Pipili bypoll deferred as Odisha set for lockdown

BHUBANESWAR: With the State poised to go into a 14-day lockdown from Wednesday, the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday deferred the Pipili bypoll scheduled on May 16.The ECI said the decision to postpone the election was taken after taking all material facts, inputs from the Chief Electoral Officer into consideration and taking note of lockdown restrictions imposed by the State government. 

Fresh notification will be issued after assessing the pandemic situation, the Commission said and added that the model code of conduct in force in the Assembly constituency has also been lifted with immediate effect.Meanwhile, there is no let up in Covid-19 surge as 8,914 new cases, up by around 899 from Sunday, were reported in the last 24 hours despite the weekend shutdown all across the State. The disease claimed five more lives during the period.

With one in five tests turning out to be positive, the test positivity rate remained above 19 per cent (pc) even as the State continued to test low at merely 46,643 including 18,494 through RT-PCR. Khurda district reported the maximum 1,258 cases followed by Sundargarh (592), Cuttack (587), Puri (530) and Sambalpur (520). While five districts, including Bargarh (452), Nabarangpur (433), Bhadrak (351), Angul (331) and Jharsuguda (304) recorded more than 300 cases, 18 districts including Balangir, Nuapada, Ganjam, Kalahandi, Jajpur, Nayagarh and Balasore reported over 100 cases each. With this, the total number of confirmed cases soared to 4,71,536 of which 4,04,063 have recovered so far. The active cases in the State stand at 65,347. The death toll has also increased to 2,073. 

In view of rising cases in prisons, the Health department notified a protocol for management of Covid cases among jail inmates. As per the SOP prepared by the Ministry of Home Affairs, collectors, municipal commissioners and CDMOs have been directed to decide up to what stage Covid patients can be kept in prison and when to shift them to government Covid hospitals in cases where adequate facilities are not available within the jail.A separate facility can be earmarked for the treatment of affected prisoners at jails from where large number of cases are reported, the SOP stated.