Odisha: Three more test positive for Covid-19, total up to 103
BHUBANESWAR: The number of Covid-19 positive persons rose to 103 in the state with three more persons testing positive for the virus in Sundargarh, the health department updated on its dashboard.
Six more persons from Jajpur district had tested positive for the virus on Saturday.
With this the total number of positive cases in Sundargarh rose to six and in Jajpur it rose to 17. Jajpur besides Bhadrak (16) and Balasore (10) have reported spurt in the number of positive cases in the past one week, with most patients having WB travel history.
Meanwhile, a Covid-19 patient of Sundargarh (Rourkela) has recovered, taking the total recovered cases in the state to 34. The total active cases now stand at 68.
The state government on Saturday conducted several camps in many schools across Bhadrak, Jajpur and Balasore districts to collect swab samples of vulnerable people for Covid-19 test and stopped all incoming vehicles, including ambulances, from West Bengal to rule out possible influx of migrants.
Sources said the health department personnel collected more than 3,000 samples from the three districts and sent for test. “We have been identifying all contacts and testing their samples. Also we have been identifying all persons who are or were at the risk of getting infected, people with travel history and fever cases and testing them. House to house surveys were done in the containment zones,” health secretary Nikunja Bihari Dhal said.
After aggressive testing of swab samples of vulnerable people using the confirmatory RT PCR method, the state government is planning mass random testing of people using rapid test kits in the three districts, the way it did it in Bhubaneswar. However, the plan depends on supply of such kits.
“We are evaluating whether we should do rapid antibody testing in these districts, provided we get the kits over the next couple of days. We have placed orders for more than two lakh kits. Supplies are not received yet,” Dhal told TOI.
Odisha had got about 6,000 rapid test kits from Indian Council of Medical Research. Around 5,000 of them were used in Bhubaneswar, which has reported 46 positive cases, for community surveillance. The Odisha Medical Services Corporation, state’s medical equipment procurement agency, has placed orders with multiple agencies for the more than two lakh IMCR-approved kits.
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