COVID-19 death toll rises to 25 in Odisha

Bhubaneswar, Jun 30 () Odisha reported two more COVID-19 fatalities on Tuesday, taking the death toll due to the disease to 25 in the state, while the number of cases crossed the 7,000-mark with 206 fresh ones, a health department official said.

Two women, aged 48 and 39 years, succumbed to the disease at a COVID hospital in Ganjam district, he said.

"Regret to report the death of two COVID positive patients of Ganjam district while under treatment in hospital. The 39-year-old woman was also suffering from chronic kidney disease," the official said.

Of the 25 deaths so far in Odisha, Ganjam, the worst-hit district, accounts for 14, followed by five in Khurda, four in Cuttack, and one each in Bargarh and Puri, he said.

Seven other coronavirus patients had died earlier but their deaths were attributed to "non-COVID reasons", the official said.

The state had reported its first COVID-19 fatality in Bhubaneswar on April 6.

He said 206 more people, including a man from the National Disaster Response Force, tested positive for COVID-19, raising the state's infection tally to 7,065.

The NDRF man was placed under institutional quarantine after his return from West Bengal, where he had gone for restoration work in the wake of cyclone Amphan, the official said.

With this, the number of disaster response personnel testing positive for the virus increased to 293. Nine BSF jawans were also infected with the disease, the official said.

Of the 206 cases, 192 were detected in quarantine centres where people returning from other states are housed for preliminary observation, while fourteen others were found during contact-tracing exercises.

The fresh cases were reported from 22 districts. Malkangiri recorded the highest of 36, he said.

Other districts that reported a high number of new cases are Jajpur (28), Koraput (18), Cuttack (17), Jagatsinghpur (17), Bolangir (16) and Deogarh (15).

At present, Odisha has 2,087 active cases, while 4,946 people have recovered from the disease

Odisha has so far tested 2,65,431 samples, including 5,003 in the last 24 hours. AAM BDC DV DV