The COVID-19 cases in the coastal State increased substantially by around 44% in the last 24 hours as 105 fresh infections were detected from 15 districts, pushing the cumulative tally to 10,50,505, the health authorities said on Tuesday.

One fresh fatality took the death toll to 8,424 while the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) at 0.32% continued to remain below 1% for the past one-and-a-half month.

Meanwhile, at least nine students of a residential Government Girls High School at Dasrathpur in Jajpur district have tested positive for Covid-19. In another development, 2 out of the 21 samples of the students of Veer Surendra Sai Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (VIMSAR), Burla, sent for genome sequencing, were found to be the carriers of Delta variant of Covid-19, said an official on Tuesday.

Of the new infectees, 12 were children. The rate of infection of children and adolescents in the age group of 0 to 18 years now is 7.94% against the previous day’s 18 per cent.

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

The Khordha district reported the highest number of daily cases at 63. The district accounted for almost 42 per cent of the new infections while 9 out of 30 districts did not report any new cases in the last 24 hours.

The state currently has 2,107 active COVID-19 cases while 10,39,921 patients including 248 on Monday recovering from the disease.

As 151 samples gave positive results out of 46,669 samples tested on Sunday, the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) stood at 0.32 per cent as against the previous day’s 0.20%.

The state’s positivity rate also stands at 4.36 per cent while more than 2.40 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 98.99% 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 1.38% 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 4,45,01,233 COVID-19 vaccine doses while 1,64,26,521 people out of 3.09 crore eligible adult population are fully vaccinated. Over 53% of the eligible population has so far received both doses of vaccine.