Odisha logs 565 new COVID-19 cases, administers over 3 crore vaccines

Odisha on Wednesday registered 565 new COVID-19 cases taking the state’s tally to 10,25,874 while five fresh fatalities pushed the coronavirus death toll to 8,192, a health department official said.

Odisha also achieved another milestone in its fight against the pandemic as the state administered over 3 crore vaccine doses including over 82 lakh beneficiaries being fully inoculated.

Taking to twitter, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said: "Glad to share that #Odisha has crossed yet another significant milestone in the fight against #COVID19 by administering 3 crore vaccines doses. Commend the hard work & commitment of our healthcare workers in ensuring a swift vaccination to save precious lives." The state had launched the vaccination drive on January 16 this year and targets to complete the inoculation programme by December 31. Of the state’s 4.5 crore population, the government has set a target to inoculate 3.09 crore people in the age of 18 years or above, an official said.

Meanwhile, the Health and Family Welfare (H&FW) department said that the new 565 new COVID-19 cases included 63 children and adolescents below 18 years of age in the last 24 hours. The rate of infection in the age group of 0 to 18 years now stands at 11.15 per cent.

The state’s daily positivity rate (TPR) on Wednesday stands at 0.96 per cent as 565 cases gave positive result out of 58,635 samples tested in Tuesday.

Khurda district of which Bhubaneswar is a part, reported the highest 256 fresh infections, followed by Cuttack (61), Balasore (28) and Jajpur (28). With this, the COVID-19 tally in the state reached 10,25,874.

Khurda and Cuttack districts together accounted for 56 per cent of the new infections while five districts - Boudh, Gajapati, Malkangiri, Nabarangpur and Subarnapur, did not report any new cases in the last 24 hours.

The five fresh fatalities were reported from Khurda (2) and one each from Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur and Puri. This took the state’s coronavirus death toll to 8,192. The state has reported 6,308 COVID deaths during the second wave against 1,876 the previous year.

While an average of 66 deaths were reported in August, it was 61 in July and 42 in June. As many as 2,056 fatalities were registered in August while it was 1,903 in July, 1,272 in June and 737 in May, H&FW department sources said.

The state now has 5,513 active COVID-19 cases while 10,12,116 patients including 634 on Tuesday have so far recovered from the highly infectious disease.

Odisha has thus far conducted over 1.99 crore sample tests while the state’s positivity rate stands at 5.15 per cent.