Special efforts needed for six districts reporting 80% of deaths in Odisha

BHUBANESWAR: Six districts in Odisha have reported more than 60 per cent of total positive cases and 80 per cent of Covid-19 deaths of the state. Ajay Parida, director of Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) Bhubaneswar and member of the state's Covid-19 expert group, on Wednesday said special efforts are needed for these districts to contain the virus outbreak.

These districts- Ganjam, Khurda, Cuttack, Sundargarh, Gajapati and Rayagada- should be included in priority list to bring the positive cases down. While Ganjam district has recorded 13,575 total positive cases, Khurda and Cuttack have reported 7,178 and 3,387 total cases respectively. Sundargarh (2,572), Gajapati (2,111) and Rayagada (1,679) districts have reported the rest 6,362 cases.

The districts have also reported 80 per cent of total Covid-19 deaths in the state. Out of 305 death cases in Odisha, only Ganjam has recorded 144 cases followed by Khurda (42), Sundargarh (19), Gajapati (16) and Rayagada (14) and Cuttack (11). "We should make sure that these districts strictly follow ICMR guidelines on testing, tracing and isolating the positive cases," said the senior scientist.

Parida said the state can treat Ganjam, Gajapati and Rayagada as a single cluster and Khurda, Cuttack and Nayagarh another cluster. Sundargarh including Rourkela city can be taken as a separate cluster. "We will focus on these three clusters and intensify our work related to testing, contact tracing and isolating of positive cases for breaking the chain of virus outbreak," he added.

Nayagarh has reported 105 positive cases on Wednesday. A total of 426 cases have been reported from the district during last one week. With this, the total number of cases touched 1,203. "The state can include Nayagarh in the Khurda cluster because it is the neighbouring district of Khurda and people normally travel to this district for different purposes," he added.

He said these districts have been reporting more cases than other districts. "Though Ganjam district is reporting more than 200 cases during last one week, but it is showing a declining trend. Khurda district cases will also come down soon. For this, testing need to be strengthened in these areas. Testing will help in identifying the positive cases so that patients can be isolated to contain virus outbreak," said Parida.

He said the number of testing has gone up in the state. A total 32,053 samples were tested on Tuesday. The number was 23,035 on Monday. "If we compare with the testing numbers of one month ago, we can say the state is doing more testing. The government is in the process to substantially increase the testing capacity which is a good sign," he added.