Record 17 COVID-19 fatalities in Odisha push toll to 859

Bhubaneswar: Odisha on Thursday registered its highest single-day spike of 17 COVID-19 fatalities, which raised the death toll to 859, while 3,615 new cases pushed the state's tally to 2, 22,734, a health department official said.

Khurda district, of which state capital Bhubaneswar is a part, registered four deaths. Two patients each succumbed to the infection in Cuttack and Nayagarh districts, and one each in Angul, Bhadrak, Balangir, Dhenkanal, Jagatsinghpur, Kalahandi, Kendrapara, Puri and Rayagada.

"Regret to inform the demise of seventeen #COVID19 positive patients while under treatment in hospitals," the Health and Family Welfare Department said on Twitter.

Ganjam district alone has accounted for 220 of the 859 deaths in the coastal state.

Of the 3,615 new cases, 2,118 were reported from various quarantine centres in Odisha, and the remaining detected during contact tracing.

Khurda recorded the maximum number of fresh cases at 671, followed by Cuttack at 371 and Angul at 188.

Odisha currently has 36,122 active cases, while 1,85,700 people have recovered so far.

Fifty-three COVID-19 patients have died due to comorbidities, according to the health department.

Over 33 lakh sample tests have been conducted in the state so far, including 49,645 on Wednesday.

(PTI)