Dip In COVID-19 Cases: Odisha People Asked To Exercise Caution With Festivals & Winter Ahead

Bhubaneswar: Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) Director Ajay Parida on Friday warned people against any kind of complacency in view of the dip in COVID-19 cases in Odisha.

With the festive season and winter round the corner, people need to be extra cautious, he said.

Parida said that the state had witnessed a 5 per cent decline in COVID-19 positive cases in the last 15 days.

“Odisha used to report 4000 plus new COVID-19 cases between September 10-11 and September 25. The daily caseload has now come down considerably. The state reported the lowest spike of 2138 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours in over a month and a half period,” he said.

The ILS director, however, dismissed reports attributing the drop in daily caseload to low testing, “The cumulative testing of 45,000 persons per day had come down to 40,000 – 42,000 due to the rains last week. However, Odisha has set a target to conduct 50,000 tests a day,” he added.

There has been a 21.25 per cent drop in active cases between September 14 and October 14. The state had 32291 active cases on September 14, which fell to 25,428 on October 14. It added 1.04 lakh new cases while 1.10 lakh patients recovered during this period. Though deaths rose from 637 to 1072, the fatality rate didn’t cross 0.40 per cent.