Odisha on Monday registered 761 new COVID-19 cases, including 101 children, taking the state’s tally to 10,01,698, while 68 fresh fatalities pushed the toll to 7,426, a health department official said.
This apart, 53 COVID-19 patients in the state have died due to comorbidities in the past.
Of the 761 new cases, 443 cases were reported from quarantine centres and the rest were detected during contact tracing.
Khurda district, of which state capital Bhubaneswar is a part, recorded the maximum number of new cases at 289, followed by Cuttack at 117.
Three districts — Kalahandi, Koraput and Nuapada — did not report any new case.
Cuttack district reported 17 fresh fatalities followed by Jagatsinghpur at 15, Dhenkanal at nine, Khurda at eight and Jajpur at six.
A 15-year-old girl was among the 68 patients who succumbed to the infection, raising the total number of children and adolescents who lost their lives to COVID-19 during the second wave to 29.
Odisha currently has 8,917 active cases, while 9,85,302 patients, including 1,078, on Sunday, have recovered from the highly infectious disease.
The positivity rate in the state stands at 5.70 per cent.
Over 1.75 crore sample tests have been conducted thus far, including 60,791 on Sunday.
As many as 2,04,48,414 people have been inoculated in the state with the COVID-19 vaccine, 48,30,273 of them having taken both doses.
Meanwhile, the chief of the Directorate of Medical Education and Training (DMET), CBK Mohanty, said the third wave is likely to strike in October, going by the prediction of the experts.
“Children might be more vulnerable to the third wave as adults, many of them, have been inoculated,” Mohanty said.
Director of Health Service, Bijay Mohapatra, said the state government has made elaborate arrangements for treatment of children, in case they are infected in large numbers.