Newborn, infant among 19 deaths in Odisha today due to Covid-19

Odisha recorded the highest daily coronavirus deaths in five months as 19 people, including two babies, succumbed to the infection on Sunday when it logged the lowest number of new cases in 20 days, the state health department said.

A three-day-old boy in Bhadrak district and a 1-year-old girl in Ganjam died from the pathogen. Four out of the new fatalities were in Bhubaneswar, a bulletin by the health department said.

The toll in the state due to the pandemic has now mounted to 8594, it said.

Odisha logged 4,843 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, the lowest in 20 days and the positivity rate was 7.7 per cent, the bulletin stated.

The infection is down by 43 per cent from 8,520 a week ago. There were 4,842 Covid-19 cases and 15 deaths on Saturday.

Khurda district, where Bhubaneswar is located, reported the highest number of 1,023 infections, followed by 735 in Sundargarh and 379 in Cuttack.

As many as 10,267 more patients recuperated and out of 62,858 sample tests 663 children were among the fresh cases, the bulletin said

It said 53 COVID-19 patients have died due to comorbidities.

The active cases declined to 53,090, including 16,932 in Khurda, which is in the red zone along with Sundargarh and Cuttack, where the number of current infections is over 2,500.

Balasore, Nuapada and Jajpur are among the nine districts that are in the yellow zone with over 1,000 cases.

The tally rose to 12,45,911, including 11,84,174 recoveries, it added.