Bhubaneswar: The state government Friday morning said the total COVID positive cases in Odisha stood at 48 as it added six more new cases Thursday.
By Friday early hours a total of 3249 samples were tested in the state. The total number of COVID 19 positive cases is pegged at 48. Two persons have already been cured and discharged from hospital.
#Covid19 Case #Odisha
9th April, 2020Total 6 new Cases on 9th April, 2020
Total Positive Cases so far: 48 pic.twitter.com/POhTdshaGP— I & PR Department, Odisha (@IPR_Odisha) April 9, 2020
The government on the other hand also talked about scaling up testing of the viral disease.
State COVID-19 spokesperson Subroto Bagchi said that the state government has also been able to expand the infrastructure in terms of new COVID hospitals. Gajapati district Thursday made dedicated their COVID special hospital with a 100-bed capacity.
“A 100 bedded COVID Hospital has started functioning today in the Hostel of Centurion University in Gajapati District, with joint collaboration of Odisha Hydro Power Corporation and Hi-tech Medical College,” he said.
In addition to this, the total number of beds in COVID Hospitals at Cuttack, Jajpur, Keonjhar (Joda), Puri, Rourkela along with two hospitals in Bhubaneswar have reached 1597. It also said that it has started tracing as well as surveillance, carried out on the contacts of two COVID-19 positive patients tested Thursday.
The government also said that despite the lockdown in place, several violations continue unabated. The government also said that despite several warnings, rumour mongering also is going on on social media.
A statement from the government said, “From April 8 morning to April 9 morning, 251 cases have been registered by the police in the state for violations of different regulations and guidelines related to COVID-19 of which 239 cases are for violation of lockdown, 5 cases for rumour-mongering and 7 for other issues,”
It also added, “258 persons have been arrested for different violations by the Police. Till date 60 cases have been registered in the state for rumour-mongering.”
The government also said that it has planned to scale up the testing facility by procuring the latest approved testing kits from the country and abroad.
“We are now in the process of bulk procurement of testing kits of antibody based diagnosis of the disease. This was recently approved by ICMR. This is faster compared to the antigen based testing kits. With this we hope to do more tests on large scale,” Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy said.