As many as 86 COVID-19 positive cases were reported from the districts of Odisha, taking the State’s total to 624 on Thursday.
Sixty-three of the 86 new cases had returned from Gujarat’s Surat — 42 in Ganjam, 13 in Kendrapara, five in Bhadrak and three in Khordha district.
Of the remaining 23 cases, 20 had returned from West Bengal, one from Karnataka and two were detected in a containment zone, according to the State government.
Of the 624 cases, 463 were under treatment at exclusive hospitals. While 185 have recovered and three have died so far, 594 persons are kept in hospital isolation.
Subroto Bagchi, the State government’s chief spokesperson for COVID-19, expressed satisfaction that 84 of the 86 cases were detected in the temporary medical centres (TMCs) set up at the grassroots level where the returnees were undergoing 21-day quarantine.
Samples tested
The State had tested 77,150 samples till Wednesday midnight, according to the Health Department.
The State’s inter-ministerial committee on the pandemic has decided to start testing facilities in the government-run medical colleges in Bolangir, Koraput and Baripada, to ramp up the capacity to 15,000 per day. About 4,500 samples are being tested per day at eight laboratories.
According to the government, more than one lakh people had returned till Thursday.
