Maintaining the descending trend in virus infection, Odisha on Monday logged 3,031 COVID-19 positive cases, lowest in the current month with the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) dipping below 5% while 43 fresh fatalities have pushed the State’s overall death toll to 3,633, the health and family welfare department officials said.

Of the 66,382 samples tested in the past 24 hours, 3,031 were detected positive at 4.9 percent TPR. With the latest spike of over 3,000 cases, Odisha’s COVID-19 tally mounted to 8,80,533.

Out of thirty districts in the State, as many as 11 districts clocked triple-digit figures in the single-day spike while remaining 19 districts reported below 100 cases registered in the last 24 hours.

Khurda, of which Bhubaneswar is a part, reported the highest cases of infection and fatality at 381 and seven respectively.

The coastal State has logged less than 4,000 COVID-19 infections for the seventh consecutive day, giving evident signs of declining trend of the contagion while the fatalities continue to rise in a cause of worry for the State’s Coronavirus managers.

Meanwhile the State government today embarked on a mass Covid vaccination drive on a campaign mode under the National Covid Vaccination Programme with a target to inoculate 3 lakh beneficiaries on daily basis.

The four districts of Khurda, Cuttack, Jajpur, Balasore- which are still witnessing COVID surge and above 10% test positivity rate- are currently tagged as Red Zones of the pandemic.

The State has been consistently logging over 40 deaths on a daily basis since the past fortnight. In the current month, the State has reported as many as 879 deaths averaging 42 deaths every day.

Odisha now has 36,633 active cases while the number of recoveries stand at 8,40,214.

The State has so far tested around 1.31 crore samples for COVID-19, including 66,382 on Sunday with the State’s overall positivity ratio at 6.7 per cent.

The State’s recovery rate currently stands at 95.42% while the active cases account for 4.16% of total positive cases registered in the State.

The State’s share is 2.95% in the country’s confirmed virus caseload while the active cases are 5.06% of India’s total active cases. The number of cured patients accounts for 2.92% of the country’s total recovery. Odisha has so far reported 0.94% of the country’s Coronavirus deaths.

Odisha’s tryst with the pandemic had begun on 15 March last year with detection of the first case while on 1 May this year, the State had recorded over 10,000 fresh cases for the first time on a day since the beginning of the pandemic.