OdishaPlus Bureau
Odisha’s COVID death toll on Tuesday rose to 25 with two more persons succumbing to the disease while the number of cases crossed the 7,000-mark with 206 fresh ones. The state during the day recorded an all-time high recovery of 243 COVID patients taking the total number of persons so far cured of the disease to 5189.
Two women, aged 48 and 39 years, succumbed to the disease at a COVID hospital in Ganjam district. “Regret to report the death of two COVID positive patients of Ganjam district while under treatment in hospital. The 39-year-old woman was also suffering from chronic kidney disease. Of the 25 deaths so far in Odisha, Ganjam, the worst-hit district, accounts for 14, followed by five in Khurda, four in Cuttack, and one each in Bargarh and Puri, he said.
Seven other coronavirus patients had died earlier but their deaths were attributed to “non-COVID reasons”, the official said, adding that the state’s first COVID-19 fatality was reported from Bhubaneswar on April 6. Meanwhile, 206 more people, including 29 BSF jawans from Malkangiri district and a man from the National Disaster Response Force tested positive for COVID-19, raising the state’s infection tally to 7,065.
Both the BSF jawans and an NDRF man were placed under institutional quarantine. While NDRF man had returned from West Bengal, where he had gone for restoration work in the wake of cyclone Amphan, the BSF jawans returned to their camps in Malkangiri district from different states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. With this, the number of disaster response personnel testing positive for the virus increased to 293 while 53 BSF jawans have so far been infected with the disease.
Of the 206 cases, 192 were detected in quarantine centers where people returning from other states are housed for preliminary observation, while fourteen others were found during contact-tracing exercises. The fresh cases were reported from 22 districts. Malkangiri recorded the highest of 36, he said. Other districts that reported a high number of new cases are Jajpur (28), Koraput (18), Cuttack (17), Jagatsinghpur (17), Bolangir (16) and Deogarh (15).
Meanwhile, the health and family welfare department statement said: “Marching ahead in its war against COVID-19, Odisha achieves an all-time high recovery of 243 patients in a day.” The total recovery now stands at 5189, which is 73.44. “While Odisha’s recovery rate: is 73.4 percent, the mortality rate: is 0.35 percent. Both are lowest in the country,” an official statement released by the information and public relations department said.
With a fresh fatality, new cases and record recovery, Odisha’s total active cases now stand at 1844, the official said adding that the state has so far tested 2,65,431 samples, including 5,003 in the last 24 hours.
A report from Sambalpur said that the Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology (VSSUT), Burla was shut down by the authorities after a lady teacher of the institution was tested Covid-19 positive and her husband died of the disease. The varsity authorities have shut down the campus for two days for sanitization.
Vice-Chancellor of the varsity, Atal Chaudhuri said, the husband of the teacher of the Department of Civil Engineering of the institution was tested positive and later he died in Angul. “Later, we also came to know that the lady teacher had also been tested Covid-19 positive. The lady teacher had come to the campus on Saturday for duty. Hence, as a precautionary measure, we have closed the varsity to sanitize the campus,” he said.