BHUBANESWAR: While the state has been seeing a gradual fall in the test positivity rate, its capital’s TPR has been hovering over 20% since the time the second wave of Covid hit home.
At present, the capital’s positivity rate is double that of the state.
Odisha on Saturday reported 7,395 fresh cases from among the 70,313 samples tested, bringing down the overall TPR to 10.5% even as the total case count in the state crossed 8 lakh.
The state has so far registered 8,06,094 Covid cases since the first case was reported in Odisha in March last year.
The capital city has been testing 4,000 swab samples every day, on an average, of which the results of around 850 have been returning positive.
In the week gone by, the city around 6,000 cases to the cumulative Covid tally.
Though there has been a let-up in Bhubaneswar’s daily infection count, it is very slow compared to the state’s overall decline in cases.
The Khurda district, of which Bhubaneswar is a part, has been reporting more than 1,000 cases since the beginning of the second wave.
Only on three occasions, its daily caseload went below 1,000.
Ajay Parida, director, Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) said, “Though Bhubaneswar is witnessing a drop in the daily Covid-19 cases, the infectivity data shows the presence of infection in clusters with five to six localities still being the hotspot zone.
It is good that capital citys daily count has come down to around 600 on Saturday.
We will have to wait to see whether this trend will continue since it is a hub and floating population is there.
Also, the markets and crowded places need to be regulated now to maintain the decline.” The capital city on Saturday reported 592 fresh cases against 1,255 new recoveries, resulting in the active cases going down below 10,000.
It has so far seen 351 Covid patients succumbing to the infection, of which 100 were in the second wave.
Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) commissioner Sanjay Singh said the city’s infectivity has reduced and it will go down further with aggressive testing and vaccination.
On Saturday, 40 more Covid patients succumbed to the virus with the toll reaching 2,952.
Khurda saw the maximum deaths (six), taking the toll close to 500.