BHUBANESWAR: Despite gradual fall in new COVID cases across the State, high fatality rate during the last two days has emerged as a major cause of concern for health officials who said the trend may continue till the patient load on ventilators and ICU beds reduces.
A day after reporting 15 deaths, Odisha reported 19 more COVID-related fatalities during the last 24 hours pushing the toll to 8,594. While five deaths were reported from hotspot Khurda, three were from Ganjam. Besides, two deaths each were reported from Angul and Nabarangpur.
The death rate has doubled in the last three days. Till Thursday, the State used to report fatalities in single digit and no deaths were reported on Friday. COVID deaths reported in the last 24 hours are highest in five months.
A senior official from the Health and Family Welfare department said most of the deaths did not occur in the last 24 hours. The toll has been updated following audit of the previous COVID deaths, he said. The official said the mortality rate in the State will continue for a certain period of time as more than 75 Covid patients are still on ventilator.
Besides, a number of patients have also been admitted to ICU though the hospitalisation has been very less during the current wave of pandemic. Health department officials however said the continuous fall in the daily case count is an indication of slowdown in the rate of infection.
The single-day spike of cases in the State continued to remain below 5,000 for the second consecutive day as 4,843 fresh cases were reported in the last 24 hours. Khurda district, of which Capital Bhubaneswar is a part, registered 1,023 new infections, followed by 735 in Sundargarh and 379 in Cuttack. The daily test positivity rate remained at around 7.7 per cent against 7.5 per cent on Saturday.
Director of Health Services Dr Bijay Mohapatra said that steps are being taken for adequate surveillance, especially after detection of 60 per cent Omicron cases during the last genome sequencing.