BHUBANESWAR: As the country recorded the biggest jump in new COVID cases on Wednesday, health experts have called for immediate resumption of the test, track and treat strategy in the State to prevent the outbreak from flaring up to unmanageable levels.
Though, Odisha is not yet seeing a concerning spike, the daily numbers are slowly rising. On Wednesday, the State reported 22 new cases.
The cases went up from three on May 31 to 31 on June 9. Though it came down marginally in the following days, the cases rose further from Tuesday when 23 people had tested positive. Even as cases remained below 50, health experts demanded the State government to step up testing to prevent further spread of the infection. The daily testing has come down from a range of 20,000 a month back to around 10,000 now.
Microbiologist Dr Tribhuban Mohapatra said when the cases are rising the State government must stick to its earlier testing target and make all symptomatic tests mandatory. "The same test, track and treat rule should be adopted to get the result of good work done in the last three waves," he said.
The experts also demanded to make the mask rule stricter as they claimed this laxity will accelerate the spread. "Since there is absolutely no enforcement, symptomatic patients without masks are moving freely in crowded markets and even travelling in crowded trains and buses endangering others. The enforcement should be imposed at the earliest," Dr Mohapatra said.
Among the districts, Khurda has been witnessing a spike in new cases. The fresh cases in the district went up from one on May 31 to 16 on Wednesday. Cuttack has also seen a steady rise in cases after 13 cases were reported from the hostel of a skill development institution.
The State has 136 active cases and the test positivity rate stood at 0.22 per cent. The State conducted 10,415 tests, including around 40 pc RT-PCR tests.
Director of Public Health Dr Niranjan Mishra said the districts have been directed to accelerate testing and deploy rapid response teams to monitor the symptomatic cases in their respective jurisdiction. "The situation is under control in Odisha unlike other states, including Maharashtra which has witnessed a sudden spike," he added.