BHUBANESWAR: The Covid death toll breached 6,000-mark in Odisha on Monday with the government announcing 67 more fatalities. The State added 1,903 Covid deaths in July pushing the case fatality rate (CFR) to around 2.89 per cent (pc) during the period, up from an average of 0.4 pc in the second wave.
The new infections, however, saw a significant drop in last 24 hours as 1,032 cases were reported, the lowest in last four months.Health department sources said Khurda district recorded the highest 12 fatalities followed by 11 in Sundargarh, 10 in Cuttack, six in Puri and five in Dhenkanal taking the death toll to 6,033.
With 1,165 deaths so far, Khurda topped the list of districts while Sundargarh recorded 538 deaths, Puri and Cuttack registered 368 and 357 deaths respectively. According to an analysis, the fatalities in one month were more than the total death count of first wave. As many as 1,876 Covid deaths were reported last year. The State, however, registered 65,818 new cases last month.
At an average of over 61 deaths a day, the virus claimed at least 2.5 times more lives than that of May when the pandemic was at its peak with highest 3,19,125 cases and 737 deaths. The rural and urban divide and age-wise death numbers indicated that the Covid severity was significantly high in rural areas and among the youth and middle-aged apart from the elderly and people with comorbidities.
Of the 1,032 new cases, Khurda district recorded the highest 237 infections followed by Cuttack (154), Jagatsinghpur (82) and Puri (82). Twenty eight districts reported less than 100 new cases each. As many as 67,131 samples were tested in the State and the test positivity rate for the day stood at 1.53 pc.
Director of Medical Education and Training Dr CBK Mohanty said the infection is on a declining trend and hopefully, it will come down to the March level soon. The deaths announced now is the backlog of May and June and it will take around a fortnight more to be cleared, he added.