Odisha continued to grapple with a rapidly increasing number of COVID 19 positive cases despite tests remaining on the lower side.
The erratic supply of vaccines also created a major problem in several districts with vaccination centres being reduced to around 400 from the initial 1400 and people standing in long queues since early morning expressing their anger on being told that there is no vaccine in several districts including some centres of Cuttack and Khordha.
Fears of the COVID graph shooting up as projected by the state health department has become a major worry for Covid managers in the state who are already busy working on a ‘worst-case scenario basis’. After hovering around 6500 cases for six successive days and giving a notion of flattening of the graph, Odisha recorded a high of 8386 new cases in the past 24 hours.
Khordha and Sundargarh districts reported 1840 and 933 cases while Cuttack logged 496 new cases and Jharsuguda 433. As of now, the state has 55245 active cases and the death toll is 2017.The projections of worstcase scenario have been that by mid-May around two lakh cases will be there with one lakh active cases.
Reports from several districts narrated of people giving vent to their anger and disgust over failing to get themselves tested and vaccinated. At some places, people alleged that they have been trying for three days to get themselves vaccinated.
In fact, the vaccination centres have further been reduced to 302 tomorrow and several districts like Balasore, Bhadrak, Boudh, Cuttack, Jajpur , Jharsuguda, Kendrapara, Khurda, Puri are not listed for 29 April as far as vaccination is concerned.
Today 469 centres were in operation. Fresh consignment of around one lakh doses are expected today. Seven districts in the state are in the red zone contributing to 60 per cent of the total number of cases.