The COVID-19 cases in the coastal State increased substantially by around 69% in the last 24 hours as 255 fresh infections were detected from 18 districts, pushing the cumulative tally to 10,50,505, the health authorities said on Wednesday.

Two fresh fatalities took the death toll to 8,426 while the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) at 0.43% continued to remain below 1% for the past one-and-a-half month.

Of the new infectees, 54 were children. The rate of infection of children and adolescents in the age group of 0 to 18 years now is 21.17% against the previous day’s 7.94 per cent.

As many as 10 districts- Nuapada (1), Malkangiri, Deogarh (4 each), Gajapati (6), Kandhamal and Nabarangpur (7 each), Kalahandi and Koraput (8 each), Rayagada and Subarnapur (9 each)- with single digit cases are on the verge of becoming Covid-free zones.

The Khordha district reported the highest number of daily cases at 106. The district accounted for almost 42 per cent of the new infections while 12 out of 30 districts did not report any new cases in the last 24 hours.

The state currently has 2,142 active COVID-19 cases while 10,40,139 patients including 218 on Tuesday recovering from the disease.

As 255 samples gave positive results out of 58,906 samples tested on Tuesday, the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) stood at 0.43 per cent as against previous day’s 0.32%.

The state’s positivity rate also stands at 4.36 percent while more than 2.41 crore samples have been clinically tested so far since the detection of COVID-19 in March, 2020 in the State.

The State’s recovery rate currently stands at 98.98% while active cases account for 0.20% of total positive cases registered in the State.

The State’s share is 3.06% in the country’s confirmed virus caseload while the active cases are 1.4% of India’s total active cases. The number of cured patients accounts for 3.09% of the country’s total recovery. Odisha has so far reported 1.84% of the country’s Coronavirus deaths.

The States health authorities have so far administered 4,50,35,835 COVID-19 vaccine doses while 1,68,45,552 people out of 3.09 crore eligible adult population are fully vaccinated. Over 54% of the eligible population has so far received both the doses of vaccine.