Don’t cross daily targets of RT-PCR tests: Bhubaneswar to district administrations
BHUBANESWAR: The state government has asked the district administrations not to cross the daily targets of RT-PCR tests set for them to avoid backlogs of reports amid rising infections in Odisha. The development came on a day the state reported 6,998 fresh cases from among the 44,064 samples tested, taking the positivity rate to 15.8%.
In the highest single-day deaths this year, twelve more succumbed to the infection, raising the Covid toll to 2,029.
“The number of RT-PCR samples sent by the districts in a day should be within the target allotted to it to prevent backlog of samples in laboratories and subsequent delay in testing,” additional chief secretary (health) Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra wrote to the district collectors and municipal commissioners on Wednesday.
A government official clarified fixing the number of RT-PCR tests for the districts is in no way an attempt to lower the daily tests as there is no such cap on rapid antigen tests. More than 15,000 samples are being tested using the RT-PCR method daily. Accumulating more samples than the laboratories’ capacity would lead to chaos, the official said.
With 44,064 samples being tested in the last 24 hours, the state crossed the milestone of one crore tests on Thursday. Of the 44,064 samples, 15,092 were tested using the RT-PCR method, 28,863 through rapid antigen and 109 in TruNat method. A total of 29 laboratories in the state are conducting the tests using the RT-PCR method.
The 6,998 new infections took the state’s active positive cases to 57,710. Seventeen of the 30 districts in the state are in the ‘red zone’ with more than 1,000 active cases each. While six districts of Deogarh, Boudh, Kandhamal, Dhenkanal, Kendrapada and Malkangiri are in the ‘green zone’ with less than 500 active cases, seven other districts of Koraput, Rayagada, Gajapati, Nayagarh, Sonepur, Jagatsinghpur and Bhadrak are in the ‘orange zone’ with the number of active cases ranging from 500 to 1,000.
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