After reporting more than 3,000 daily cases consecutively for the past five days, Odisha’s COVID-19 tally on Sunday breached the one-lakh mark while the death toll is inching closer to 500.
As many as 3,014 cases were reported on Sunday. The daily cases have been going past the 3,000-mark since August 26. The highest single-day spike of 3,682 cases was detected on August 28.
After the first detection of the novel coronavirus in a student, who had returned from Italy, on March 15, Odisha has taken 169 days to reach 1,00,934 cases. Close to one fifth of the total cases was reported in the past one week.
The State took 115 days to cross the 10,000-mark while the remaining 90,000 cases were detected in just 44 days. Two third of the total confirmed infections were reported in August itself.
As of now, 70,714 patients have been cured while there are still 29,685 active cases.
Odisha accounted for 2.91% of the country’s total positive cases while its share in active cases was estimated at 3.95%. The State lost 482 persons to the contagion accounting for 0.77% of India’s death-toll.
While Odisha’s two neighbours — Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal — have long breached the one-lakh mark, two other neighbours — Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand — are yet to cross 50,000 cases.
‘Peak by mid-Sept.’
“By mid-September, the country may touch a peak in the pandemic. Odisha seems to be lagging behind the national graph by two weeks. So our estimation is that State’s peak is likely to come by end of September,” said Jayant Panda, technical spokesperson of Odisha Health Department.
Due to the increase in number of tests, which was now over 60,000 per day, the State was able to detect more cases and isolate more patients than before, said Dr. Panda.
“Our recovery rate is high. At present, the State’s per day cases hover around over 3,000 while the average recovery number is 2,800 per day. Our recovery numbers will improve further and overtake gradually per day detection cases,” he said.
Dr. Panda said, “we are much better compared to the national scenario. Our death rate is 0.5% against national average of 1.8%.”
Although Ganjam district, which was epicentre of the pandemic, is leading the table with 17,672 cases, it has already moved past its peak. Khordha district with 16,146 confirmed cases is placed second. The capital city of Bhubaneswar, which is part of Khordha, is now the new hotspot.
