One New COVID-19 Infection From This Locality In Bhubaneswar; Active Cases 77

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha capital has reported a lone COVID-19 positive case in the last 24 hours.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Commission on Tuesday identified the infected as a 70-year-old woman of BJB Nagar. She is a quarantine case.

Nine more patients also recovered from the infection during this period.

With this, the city now has 77 active cases.

While the sharp decline in daily caseload is good news, the Centre’s alert over a drop in testing rings alarm bells.

At a review on Saturday, the Union Health Ministry had expressed concern over a decrease in total tests, a low share of RT-PCR tests and an increase in weekly positivity, besides lax contact tracing, in 10 districts of Odisha. These include Sambalpur, Sundargarh, Balasore, Khurda, Angul and Bargarh. 

Following this, these districts were asked to ramp up RT-PCR testing.