Odisha’s COVID-19 tally mounted to 8,56,121 on Monday as 4,339 more people tested positive for the infection, the lowest single-day rise in the last 55 days, the health department officials said.

The Test Positivity Rate (TPR) which soared above 20% in May has dropped below 10% in the current month. The positive samples detected during the last 24 hours stood at 6.99% TPR.

44 fresh fatalities due to the contagion pushed the death toll to 3,346. Of the 4,339 new cases, 2,475 were reported from quarantine centres, and 1,864 detected during contact tracing.

Khurda district, which comprises the state capital Bhubaneswar, reported the highest number of new cases at 700, followed by Cuttack (480) and Balasore (296). The remaining new cases were registered in several other districts.

Odisha now has 55,923 active cases, and 4,295 people were cured of the disease on Saturday, taking the total number of recoveries to 7,96,799.

The State has so far tested over 1.26 crore samples for COVID-19, including 62,034 on Sunday, and the positivity ratio stands at 6.73 per cent.

The State had reported 4,445 positive cases on 19 April. Since then, the latest daily spike is the lowest virus infection reported in the State. The Test Positivity Rate on Monday slumped to 6.99%, underlining the fact that 7 out of 100 samples were tested positive in the last 24 hours.

Of the 30 districts of Odisha, 12 are in the green zone where the test positivity rate is below five per cent.

The State’s recovery rate currently stands at 93.07% with as many as 7,96,799 cured of the disease so far. Odisha currently has 55,923 active cases, which account for 6.53% of total positive cases registered in the State.

The State’s share is 2.91% in the country’s confirmed virus caseload while the active cases are 5.48% of India’s total active cases. The number of cured patients accounts for 2.84% of the country’s total recovery. Odisha has so far reported 0.9% 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 15 May 2021; Odisha’s caseload had crossed the six lakh mark. 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 in March 2020.