Odisha reports 2,085 cases as COVID-19 graph plateaus

Odisha on Tuesday reported 2,085 new COVID-19 cases and 56 more deaths, a Health Department official said.

The new cases were detected after testing 70,476 samples, taking the positivity rate to 2.95 percent, he said.

Cuttack reported the highest positivity rate at 6.95 percent, followed by Nayagarh (5 percent) and Kendrapara (4.55 percent), he added.

Odisha has so far reported 9,58,059 COVID-19 cases and 5,172 deaths.

CBK Mohanty, the chief of the Directorate of Medical Education and Training (DMET), said that though the COVID situation significantly improved in the state, the infection graph continues to be at a plateau stage.

''The daily infections are not plummeting after a certain stage, the phenomenon is called thick-tail or fatty-tail,'' he said.

''Odisha is witnessing the situation, which was earlier seen in Maharashtra and Kerala,'' he said.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) declared 14 places, including some apartments, as micro containment zones after the detection of multiple cases there.

Of the new infections, 1,198 were reported from quarantine centers while the rest 887 were local contact cases.

Khurda district registered the highest 528 new infections, followed by Cuttack (210) and Bhadrak (173).

Khurda also reported the highest number of fatalities as 19 people died.

There are 20,168 active COVID-19 cases in the state at present.

Since Monday, 2,248 patients have recovered. In all, 9,32,666 patients have recovered from COVID-19 in the state.