With 51 new cases, Odisha's COVID-19 tally jumps to 270

Odisha on Friday reported the biggest single-day spike in coronavirus cases with 51 people testing positive for COVID-19, a majority of whom returned from Gujarat, taking the total tally in the state to 270, the health department said.

Of the fresh cases, 50 had returned from Surat in Gujarat while one came from Kerala. Forty-three of the new cases were reported from Ganjam whose tally has now climbed to 71, the highest in the state. Five were from Kendrapara and three from Bhadrak.

Another person, who tested positive in Bhubaneswar, is counted as a patient of Maharashtra. He is a truck driver from Mumbai who met with a road accident in Odisha, the government said in a statement.

The 42-year-old man was admitted at AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, and later tested positive for COVID-19, it said.

The number of active cases in Odisha now stands at 205 with recovery of 63 patients. Two persons from Bhubaneswar have died of the infection while 298 people are in hospital isolation.

An official said three IAS officers were deployed for one month in Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik home district Ganjam to assist the local administration in COVID-19 management.

Ganjam district, which reported its first case on May 2, saw its tally jump to 71 in a span of only seven days. The spike in the COVID-19 cases is mostly due to return of migrant workers from Gujarat.

Migrant workers from Odisha, who were stranded in Surat due to the lockdown, have been returning home en mass on buses and trains after the Centre allowed their movement.

Nearly three lakh Odia workers mostly from Ganjam district are engaged in diamond cutting, textiles and other works in Surat.

"All these people (who tested positive), barring one from Kerala, had returned from Surat and were in quarantine centres. They were symptomatic," the official said, adding the tally of Bhadrak district now stands at 24, while Kendrapara has a total eight cases.

The state health department had on Thursday conducted 2,460 COVID-19 tests. So far, Odisha has tested 52,974 samples, he said.

After Ganjam district, Jajpur reported the maximum 55 COVID-19 cases, followed by Bhubaneswar at 50, Balasore at 27, Bhadrak 24, Sundergarh 12, Kendrapara eight, Jagatsinghpur five and Mayurbhanj four.

Two cases each have been detected in Cuttack, Jharsuguda, Bolangir, Keonjhar and Kalahandi, and one each in Puri, Dhenkanal, Deogarh and Koraput districts.

With migrant workers returning to Odisha, the number of COVID-19 cases has gone up manifold. While the state reported first 50 cases in 27 days, the duration reduced to 15 days for the next 50 cases. It took six days for the tally to rise by another 50 and then five and two days respectively, the state's COVID-19 spokesperson Subroto Bagchi said.