BHUBANESWAR: Odisha on Monday achieved the milestone of completing one lakh tests for Covid-19. The State has conducted 1,00,302 tests in nine laboratories by Monday midnight. It is now ranked eighth among the top-10 states as far as testing capacity is concerned. Tamil Nadu tops the list with 3,37,841 tests, followed by Maharashtra at 2,82,437, Rajasthan 2,43,476 and Andhra Pradesh 2,48,771. Neighbouring states like West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar have tested 93,570, 35,359 and 46,996 respectively.
Additional Chief Secretary of Health department PK Mohapatra said the State has continuously ramped up testing capacity. “Initially the tests were being conducted in one laboratory at the RMRC, Bhubaneswar. With installation of modern testing labs and machines in various institutions, the testing capacity is being augmented,” he said. However, in a more heartening note in the face of rising cases after migrants’ return, Odisha has a positivity rate of 0.98 per cent (pc), way below the national average of four pc.
Most of the positive cases in the State are imported. Of the 978 positive cases, 851 cases are imported from West Bengal, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka.
The Covid-19 fatality rate in Odisha is also low at 0.5 pc against the national average of 3.3 pc. The recovery rate is at 31.2 pc. Odisha has conducted 229 tests per one lakh population and 103 tests for one positive case. While Andhra Pradesh has conducted highest 476 tests per one lakh population and Tamil Nadu carried out 447 tests, the number of tests in Maharashtra and Gujarat is 229 and 216 respectively.
State crosses 1 lakh Covid test milestone
Among the 30 districts in the State, Khurda district has conducted highest 16,481 tests, including 13,983 tests in Bhubaneswar as on Sunday, followed by Jajpur (10,621), Balasore (9843), Ganjam (6632), Cuttack (5720) and Bhadrak (5539).
Appreciating the State’s effort in ramping up tests, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik thanked everyone who worked expeditiously to scale up testing facilities in such a short time and also those working to ensure logistics.
The State has also planned to conduct tests in four Government MCHs at Balangir, Koraput, Balasore and Baripada by end of this month. “As per the revised guideline of ICMR, the focus will be on symptomatic cases, service providers and asymptomatic direct and high-risk contacts of confirmed cases besides all SARI and ILI patients,” Mohapatra said.