BHUBANESWAR: As Odisha logged 576 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the highest daily caseload in over five months, the State government has decided to accelerate Covid testing in districts that witnessed large congregations for Rath Yatra.
Sources said the testing will be stepped up in Puri, Khurda, Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Cuttack, Sundargarh, Kendrapara and some other districts from next week as part of containment measures to check further spread of the disease.
The State reported over 500 cases for the second consecutive day on Sunday, pushing the active cases to 3000 and a majority of the fresh infections were from the seven districts. The number of infections jumped 10 times in the past fortnight due to a rapid doubling rate.
The infection count crossed the 100 mark in Cuttack due to Covid clusters in educational institutions. Of the fresh cases, the maximum 204 were from Khurda, 118 from Cuttack, 42 from Sundargarh, 20 from Sonepur, 17 from Puri and 16 from Balasore.
There has been a marked growth in the test positivity rate (TPR) as it went up to 3.5 per cent (pc) from 0.02 pc a month ago. The TPR in Sonepur rose astronomically to 19.23 pc as 20 tested positive out of 104 samples. Khurda had a TPR of 10 pc, followed by 9.19 pc in Cuttack, 9.92 pc in Puri, 3.89 pc in Sundargarh and 3.86 in Gajapati.
Although the weekly positivity rate of the State is below the national average of 4.08 pc, health experts fear it will increase in the coming days as the infection that is anticipated to have spread due to congregations without masks may be detected after the 10-day gestation period.
Health officials, however, predicted that the fourth wave of the pandemic in the State may see the peak during the August first week in view of the trend seen in states like Maharashtra, Delhi and Kerala. This time the peak is expected to remain below 5,000 given the coverage of Covid vaccination.
Director of Health Services Dr Bijay Mohapatra said the next four weeks are crucial as the surge that is expected due to the congregations may be witnessed during that period.“Since there has been a creeping increase in the number of Covid-19 cases, we have decided to augment manpower needs in the medical colleges and Capital Hospital to accelerate testing. The focus will be on Puri,” he added.