 "Coronavirus testing")
Odisha's COVID-19 caseload
mounted to 8,37,226 on Thursday as 6,097 more people tested positive for the infection, a health department official said.
Forty-four fresh fatalities pushed the coronavirus death toll in the state to 3,167, he said.
Of the new cases, 3,446 were reported from quarantine centres and 2,651 were detected during contact tracing.
Khurda district, which comprises the state capital Bhubaneswar, reported the highest number of fresh cases at 1,017, followed by Cuttack (647) and Jajpur (434).
The remaining cases were registered in several other districts.
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Taking to Twitter, the Health and Family Welfare Department said, "Regret to inform the demise of forty-four COVID patients, while under treatment in hospitals."
Of the fresh fatalities, Khurda reported five, followed by Angul, Bargarh, Cuttack and Jharsuguda (four each) and Kalahandi, Puri Sundargarh and Rayagada (three each).
Two patients each succumbed to the disease in Bolangir, Boudh and Mayurbhanj and one each in Deogarh, Dhenkanal, Jajpur, Kendrapara and Sambalpur, the official said.
Fifty-three other COVID-19 patients have died due to comorbidities, he said.
At least 8,032 people were cured of the disease on Wednesday, taking the total number of recoveries to 7,64,673.
Odisha now has 69,333 active cases, he said.
The state has conducted over 1.24 crore sample tests for COVID-19, including 69,638 on Wednesday, and the positivity rate stands at 6.71 per cent.
Nine districts were in the green zone where the test positivity rate remained below five per cent on June 9.
Altogether, 86,45,298 doses of vaccines have been administered to people in the state, the official said.
Meanwhile, the government has decided to vaccinate medicine shop owners and staffers, who have been working during the lockdown.
Health and Family Welfare Department Additional Chief Secretary PK Mohapatra asked district collectors, municipal commissioners and others officers to ensure that employees of medicine shops receive vaccine shots on a priority basis.
Medicine stores' staffers, aged 45 years and above, will be given vaccines supplied by the Centre, while employees of these outlets in the age group of 18 to 44 years will be inoculated from the stock of the state-procured vaccines, Mohapatra said in a letter to the district authorities.
The state government has exempted medicine stores from COVID restrictions as they are essential service providers.
The Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC), Bhubaneswar, a unit of ICMR, on Thursday launched a two-day sero-survey among medicine traders here to assess the prevalence of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID disease.
RMRC director Dr Sanghamitra Pati said the authorities have set up a camp on the premises of Utkal Chemists and Druggist Association in the Unit-4 area here to conduct the survey.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
