'Coronavirus in Odisha at its peak': Covid situation likely to stabilise in September, says research body

Bhubaneswar: As Odisha continues to report more than 1,000 new COVID-19 cases daily since July 21, it appears that the infection is at its peak in the state now, and the situation is likely to stabilise by September with the cooperation of the people, a central government research institute said on Friday.

While as many as 24,812 coronavirus cases were detected and 152 deaths reported in July, the trend is further rising in August. During the seven days of the current month, 9,637 cases have been found and 70 people succumbed to the disease during the period.

"Keeping the trend in view, it appears that the infection is at its peak. This trend is heading towards a stabilisation as it happened in Mumbai and Delhi," said Dr Ajay Parida, the Director of Institute of Life Sciences (ILS), Bhubaneshwar.

ILS is an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology, which carries out multidisciplinary research in the area of life sciences. It has been studying the virus trend in Odisha.

However, the ILS director said that only government guidelines are not sufficient to bring down the trend and people must strictly adhere to norms and maintain social distancing, mask-wearing and hand hygiene.

Parida also appealed to people not to panic over the rising trend of the infection surge.

He said that districts such as Ganjam, Khurda where Bhubaneswar city is located, Cuttack, Sundergarh and some pockets of Gajapati and Rayagada show a surge in infection.

"Those can be contained in a calculated manner with active cooperation of the people," the ILS director said.

Parida said that Ganjam district, which is described as the corona hotspot of the state, has been showing a declining trend both in the number of case detection and fatalities since the past three days.

Though Ganjam continued to remain on top of the new cases for a long time since May, it was replaced by Khurda district on Friday. This is happening due to an increase in testing and isolation of positive cases in Ganjam, he said.

Khurda, on the other hand, is on its peak as its active cases are close to that of Ganjam. While the number of Ganjam's active cases stands at 3,317, it is 3,175 in Khurda district.

The caseload of Ganjam is 12,359 against Khurdas 5,829 so far, an official data released by the health department said.

Parida said that some pockets of Bhubaneswar have been prone to infection, which needs to be contained in order to reduce Khurda districts caseload.

Odisha has so far reported 42,550 positive cases while 26,888 patients have recovered from COVID-19. The number of active cases is 15,370 in the state where 247 have succumbed to the disease.