BHUBANESWAR : Lockdown across the State and complete weekend shutdown in urban localities notwithstanding, Odisha logged the highest single day spike of 12,390 new Covid-19 cases and 22 deaths in last 24 hours. The number of cases rose by over 16 per cent (pc) as the tests went up by around 10 pc. As many as 56,214 tests, including 19,900 RT-PCR, were conducted taking the test positivity rate (TPR) to 22 pc against 51,451 tests and 20.7 pc TPR a day ago.
While all 30 districts recorded more than 100 cases each, six districts reported over 500 cases each. With 2,201 fresh cases, the worst hit Khurda’s daily count crossed the 2,000 mark for the first time pushing the active caseload of the district close to 15,000.
What is more worrying is that matching the urban growth, the infection is spreading faster in rural areas which lack required healthcare infrastructure. With many cases going unreported, the share of rural cases is more in most of the districts except a few like Khurda, Sundargarh, Sambalpur and Angul where the urban areas still dominate the infection tally.
An analysis said an overall 58 pc Covid infections in the State are from the rural hinterlands. While the rural-urban share during the first wave of the pandemic was 60:40, this time it is recorded 56:44. Of the total 5,76,297 confirmed cases registered in both the waves so far, 3,36,515 were from villages and 2,39,782 from urban localities.
In the second wave, 2,44,435 people have tested positive till May 13 and among them 1,36,322 are from rural pockets. As many as 2,00,193 people among the 3,31,862 confirmed cases in the first wave were from villages.
At least 13,480 out of every 10 lakh people in Odisha have tested positive for the virus. In the last one week, the number of new infections has grown by an average of two pc every day in the State. For every one lakh people, 24,639 samples were tested positive. The death of 22 patients was also the highest on a day taking its toll to 2,273.