Odisha's COVID-19 death toll mounts to 12; 179 new cases detected

Bhubaneswar, Jun 20 () The death toll due to COVID-19 mounted to 12 in Odisha on Saturday while 179 new cases were reported in the state even as a record number of 237 patients recovered from the contagion during the day, a health department official said.

The number of recoverees was the highest for a single day in the state, the official said.

A 60-year-old man from Puri district succumbed to the disease while under treatment at a hospital, a state health and family welfare department statement said.

"The deceased was also suffering for a long time from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease," it said.

The 179 cases include 11 personnel of disaster response teams which returned from cyclone restoration work in West Bengal.

Four railway employees, six staff of separate private hospitals and one government hospital employee also tested positive for the virus.

A total of 150 new cases have been detected from different quarantine centres where people returning from other states are housed, while 29 are local contacts. Contact tracing and follow up action is underway, he said.

Puri is the fourth district in Odisha from where a COVID-19 death has been reported.

Earlier, six coronavirus deaths were reported from Ganjam district, four from Khurda district and one from Cuttack district.

Meanwhile, the blood bank in the Capital Hospital premises here was sanitised after a technician was tested positive, official sources said.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation declared Dumduma area in the city as containment zone following detection of six cases there.

The BMC said that contact tracing of the coronavirus positive cases is underway and primary contacts and nearby houses are being quarantined/sanitised and will remain under surveillance.

AT 57, Ganjam district has reported the maximum new cases followed by 27 in Khurda, 18 in Keonjhar, 15 in Cuttack, 10 in Mayurbhanj, six in Angul, five each from Bhadrak, Rayagada and Kendrapara, four in Jagatsinghpur, three in Jajpur, two each from Bargarh and Malkangiri, while one each case was reported from Deogarh and Nabarangpur.

Eighteen personnel of the NDRF and Odisha Fire Service were found to be positive taking the total number of disaster response teams' infected personnel to 224.

NDRF DG S N Pradhan, in a tweet informed that 50 NDRF personnel have so far recovered from the disease.

Eleven fire service personnel have also recovered.

Ganjam district administration said of the new 57 cases, three were frontline workers engaged in different quarantine centres.

With the new cases and fresh recoveries, the number of active cases in the state stands at 1,306 while 3,534 patients have recovered. The rate of recovery now stands at 72.77 per cent.

In the last 24 hours, the state conducted 3,164 sample tests taking the total number of corona tests to 2,19,774.

Fifteen of Odisha's 30 districts have reported over 100 cases each, officials added.

As many as 1,678 people returned to Odisha on Saturday taking the total number of returnees to 5,69,646 so far, an official said. AAM KK RHL