Odisha reports highest single-day surge in Covid-19 cases with 129 new infections

Odisha on Sunday reported 129 new cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), in the biggest spike in a single day so far, pushing the number of infected people near 2,000, officials of the health and family welfare department said.

They said the state’s tally of Covid-19 stood at 1948 after the new cases were recorded in the last 24 hours.

Of the new cases, 18 are in Kendrapada, 16 in Gajapati, 12 in Nuapada, 11 in Balangir, 10 cases each in Ganjam and Jajpur, 7 in Khurda, 6 each in Balasore, Bargarh, Mayurbhanj and Sundergarh, 5 in Cuttack, 4 in Deogarh, 3 in Keonjhar, 2 in Jagatsinghpur, and one each in Malkangiri, Dhenkanal, and Sambalpur.

Ganjam district continued to be the epicentre of Covid-19 cases with 414 patients, followed by Jajpur with 269 and Balasore with 152 infections.

Officials said despite the rising Covid-19 infections, the number of fully recovered patients in Odisha now exceeds that of active cases.

While there are 889 active cases of Covid-19, 1,050 people have recovered and seven have died in the state to date. There are more daily recoveries than persons testing positive for the last three days, officials said.

However, Odisha has not been able to ramp up its daily testing capabilities to more than 5,000. On May 30, the 13 laboratories tested 4641 samples while on May 29 it was 3920.

The last time the state had tested more than 5,000 samples was on May 23 when 5,388 samples were tested.

Health department officials said that lack of trained manpower and technical constraints were limiting their testing capabilities even as more than four lakh migrant workers have arrived in Odisha.

Though the samples need to be tested within 48 hours, in several cases they are being tested in four to five hours of collection.