With Odisha registering a single day spike of 4445 Covid cases beating the record high of 4356 cases on 25 September 2020, the government announced a weekend shut down across all towns of the state. The shutdown is in addition to the night curfew already enforced in the urban areas.

Fresh guidelines were issued further curbing wedding, funeral, social, political , cultural and academic gatherings. Hotels and restaurants as well as street food and highway dhaba’s have been asked to provide only take-away food packets. The in-house guests of hotels will however be permitted to eat at the dining or restaurant.

Guest lists not more than 50 ( all inclusive) of weddings have to be submitted to local authorities at least 24 hours prior to the marriage. The ceiling includes priests, family members etc.Essential services will continue to function .

The state government also stepped up its efforts to revive and increase Covid hospitals , cluster CCCs etc in anticipation of rising number of patients. The rapid spread of the second wave and the gravity of the situation could be gauged from the fact that on 25 September 2020 when 4356 cases were reported the number of tests were much higher than that of today when 4445 positive cases were detected. This was reflected in the positivity rate which stood at 12.28 per cent.

Signs of the prevailing second wave of the disease picking further steam are writ large on the wall given the exponential rate at which the pandemic is currently climbing. What apparently sounds the alarm bell is that the spike percentage has gone up almost seven-fold in the past fortnight. While on 5 April the State accounted for 573 new cases, today’s fresh infections is almost seven times more than the daily cases.

The comforting trends amidst the steady upsurge of the disease are the lower fatality rate and availability of beds, ICUs and ventilators in COVID-specific hospitals. With today’s addition of infected persons, the active cases have inched close to 25,000. Only 15 to 20 percent of the patients required hospitalization. There is no shortage of beds and emergency healthcare infrastructures like ICUs and ventilators to take care of the infected people, claimed official sources.

Apart from the 48 dedicated hospitals for treatment of coronavirus patients, the state has 178 COVID Care Centres and 17,647 temporary facilities, said officials. Four fresh fatalities pushed the coastal state’s toll to 1,948.

As many as 13 districts reported over 100 cases. While Sundargarh topped the list with 722 cases, Khordha remained in the second position with 587
positive cases. This was followed by Nuapada (437), Kalahandi (273), Cuttack (251), Sambalpur (241), Jharsuguda (231), Puri (219), Bargarh (178), Bolangir (168), Nabarangpur (127), Balasore (123) and Mayurbhanj (100).

Public health experts said the rise will continue for the next four weeks. They also referred to the mathematical models which suggest that one detected case equals to 30 undetected or asymptomatic cases .

A steep spike of 27,138 positive cases has been detected in the past 11 days in Odisha at an average of 2,467 cases every day. The capital city Bhubaneswar
today reported as many as 468 fresh positive cases, the highest daily spike reported this year.

As many as 82.47 per cent  infections were sourced from local contacts, in a cause of worry for city’s COVID managers. While 82 cases were quarantine cases, 386 were local contact cases.The city’s cumulative case load has in the meanwhile jumped to 36,147. While there are 2,827 active cases, 33,004 infected persons have so far recovered from the infectious disease.