Odisha reports second COVID-19 death; total cases at 179

Bhubaneswar, May 6. Odisha reported its second COVID-19 fatality after a 77-year-old man died in Bhubaneswar, the Health and Family Welfare Department officials said on Wednesday.
He breathed his last at the KIMS COVID-19 Hospital here on Tuesday night, they said.

The man had underlying co-morbidities of hypertension, diabetes and kidney ailments, the officials said.

The man, a resident of the Madhusudan Nagar area of the city, was a close relative of another COVID-19 patient.

Though his sample tested negative on April 9, he later developed symptoms. He was tested again and found to be positive for COVID-19 on April 28, officials said.

He was at a government quarantine centre from April 11 to 20 and home quarantine from April 21 to 27. He was admitted to the hospital on April 28 after being tested positive.

On April 6, a 72-year-old man from Bhubaneswar”s Jharpada had died due to the disease at the AIIMS here.

Meanwhile, three more people tested positive for COVID-19 in the state, taking the total number of coronavirus cases to 179, an official of the department said.

An 18-year-old man, who recently returned from Surat in Gujarat, tested positive for COVID-19 in Ganjam.

A 48-year-old man tested positive in Balasore, while a 65-year-old man was detected with coronavirus infection in Jajpur district. Both of them returned from West Bengal recently, the official said.

All of them were in quarantine centres due to their travel history, he said.

Till Wednesday afternoon, there were 117 active cases in the state, while 60 people had recovered from the disease, he said.

Jajpur district has reported the maximum number of cases at 54, followed by Bhubaneswar in Khurda district at 47, Balasore at 25, Bhadrak at 21 and Sundergarh at 12.

Four positive cases have been reported from Ganjam district, while two cases each have been detected in Cuttack, Jharsuguda, Kendrapara, Bolangir, Keonjhar and Kalahandi, and one each in Puri, Dhenkanal, Deogarh and Koraput districts

As four positive cases have been detected in Ganjam district and all of them had returned from Surat, the state government rushed an expert team consisting of Director of Family Welfare Bijay Kumar Panigrahi and Scientist of RMRC- Bhubaneswar Jaysingh Khatri.

The team will supervise surveillance and containment measure in Ganjam district, the official said

The Health and Family Welfare Department in a notification said that the dean and principal of MKCG Medical College and Hospital in Berhampur will be part of the team, besides some senior professors of medicine. (PTI)