Bhubaneswar: The State has detected 67 fresh Omicron cases on Wednesday taking the total tally to 170.
The Institute of Life Science (ILS), Bhubaneswar, has informed the Health and Family Welfare Department about detection of new Omicron cases after conducting genome sequencing of the samples. However, the details of new Omicron cases are yet to be revealed by the officials.
Meanwhile, the State has reported 8,778 fresh Covid cases on Wednesday taking the active caseload to 35,242.
As per the information shared on the State Covid dashboard, out of the 8778 cases, 792 are children below 18 years of age. Highest 2,615 cases were reported from Khurda district, followed by Sundargarh (1252), Cuttack (766), Sambalpur (596), Mayurbhanj (338), Balasore (231), Balangir (216), Puri (216) and Jharsuguda (203). Remaining districts have reported below 200 cases.
A total of 74,611 samples were tested in the State in the past 24 hours. The daily test positivity rate (TPR) increased to 11.76% from 10.25% recorded on the previous day.
Districts like Saundargarh, Khurda, Sambalpur and Cuttack have been put under red zone due to reporting of high number of cases while Balasore has been classified as yellow zone. Remaining 25 districts are under the green zone as these districts have below 1000 active cases.
The Covid infection rate is increasing in other countries and some other States too. Here in Odisha also the cases are increasing and the TPR also increased to 11.7% as four to five districts reports high rate, said director of public health, Niranjan Mishra.
However, most of the people infected with the virus get mild symptoms or asymptomatic and rate of hospitalization & fatality and demand of ICU beds have remained very low, said Mishra, adding, “We can say the situation is totally under control now.”
“As per our prediction, such scenario will continue to remain throughout January, February and some days of March,” he said. All district collectors have been asked to adopt cluster containment strategy to break the chain of transmission of the virus, added the director.