BHUBANESWAR: The daily Covid count fell below the 2,000-mark for the first time in almost three months as the State saw 1,993 new cases in the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 9,41,745.After an occasional rise in new infections owing to accelerated testing, sources said there has been a steady decline in fresh cases for the last few days. The cases dropped from 2806 on July 9 to 1993 on Monday. The last time the daily case count went below 2000 was in April.
With 322 cases, Khurda district continued to report the highest number of fresh infections followed by Cuttack (297), Balasore (181), Puri (144), Jajpur (141) and Mayurbhanj (110). The number of cases in other districts was below 100. Four districts reported in single digit.There has been significant improvement in test positivity rate as it remained below three pc for the third consecutive day. The TPR stood at 2.7 per cent (pc) with 72,754 tests, including 22,482 RT-PCR tests, being conducted in the last 24 hours. The positivity rate was five pc or above only in three districts - Cuttack (5.6 pc), Nayagarh (5.4 pc) and Mayurbhanj (five pc).
However, there was no let up in fatalities with the Health department announcing 63 more deaths on Monday. With this, the cumulative death toll touched 4,662.Khurda recorded the maximum 13 deaths, followed by seven in Bargarh, six in Mayurbhanj, five in Ganjam, four in Kendrapara and Puri, three each in Boudh, Dhenkanal, Jajpur and Nayagarh and two eah in Balasore, Jagatsinghpur and Keonjhar.The State has 21,630 active cases after 2937 patients recovered on the day. Odisha was among top-six states with active cases of more than 20,000. It was among the five states that have been recording the maximum number of Covid fatalities.