BHUBANESWAR: The Capital city saw a whopping 803 new cases in the last 24 hours pushing the active case tally to over 4,600. Not only residential areas but Covid-19 cases have also been reported from the office of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, Capital Hospital and CRPF campus.
The civic body declared nine more residential units as micro-containment zones on Wednesday. The CRPF campus, where 10 cases had been detected on Tuesday, reported another 12 cases on the day. At the BMC office, four officials from its engineering wing tested positive.
Subsequently, mass testing of the engineering division was done by the civic body. In Capital Hospital, the city’s largest government hospital, 25 doctors, nurses and staff have already been infected with Covid in the current wave.
To extend medical advisory to people having fever or any other symptoms of Covid, a fever clinic has been opened on the premises of the Capital Hospital this week. Hospital director Dr. Laxmidhar Sahoo said the clinic will function from 8 am to 5 pm. Besides, a sample collection kiosk has been opened on the hospital premises for the collection of swab samples for the RT-PCR test. The kiosk timing is also 8 am to 5 am.
Meanwhile, the city’s health officials said that the current surge of Covid-19 cases in the city could be fuelled by the Delta variant with Omicron still to come into play. The estimation is based on low numbers of Omicron cases detected in the city. Of the 169 Omicron cases reported in the State, 17 are from the city.
BMC Deputy Commissioner for Health and Sanitation Suvendu Kumar Sahoo said, “The current wave, as it appears, could be due to the Delta variant as only 17 have been found infected with Omicron since the detection of the first case in the State in December last year. Sources, however, said that many Omicron cases may have remained undetected due to inadequate lab facility for genome sequencing which is limited to only one at present.