In the sharpest spike in COVID-19 cases in the last seven months, Odisha on Wednesday registered a 24 percent increase in fresh coronavirus cases as compared to the previous day as 8,778 more people tested positive for the infection with Test Positivity Rate (TPR) spiraling to 11.77%.

This is the biggest single-day spike since 3 June last year. The positivity rate increased to 11.77 percent from 10.25 percent on the previous day as 74,611 samples were tested.

As many as 792 children are among the new patients, who took the state’s caseload to 10,91,547.

Khurda district, under which Bhubaneswar falls, reported over a quarter of the new cases as 2,615 people were afflicted with the disease. Sundargarh logged 1,252 infections, followed by 766 in Cuttack and 596 in Sambalpur.

The cases shot up by more than seven-fold from 1,216 infections a week ago. The state had logged 7,071 cases on Tuesday, while it had registered 8,839 infections on June 3 last year.

The number of active cases in the state climbed to 35,242 — including 11,049 in Khurda, which is in the red zone along with Sundargarh, Sambalpur and Cuttack. Balasore is in the yellow zone with 1,023 patients.

The toll stood at 8,469 as no fresh fatality was registered. Fifty-three other patients have died due to comorbidities so far. Amid relentless spike in infection, the death toll has however dropped considerably as only one fatality was recorded in the last four days.

A total of 10,47,783 people have recovered from the disease thus far, including 752 in the last 24 hours.

The State’s recovery rate currently stands at 95.99% while active cases account for 3.22% of total positive cases registered in the State.

The State’s share is 3.07% in the country’s confirmed virus caseload while the active cases are 5.97% of India’s total active cases. The number of cured patients accounts for 3.04% of the country’s total recovery. Odisha has so far reported 1.75% of the country’s Coronavirus deaths.

The state’s health authorities have so far administered 5,25,35,282 COVID-19 vaccine doses while 2,21,11,013 people out of 3.09 crore eligible adult population are fully vaccinated. More than 71% of the eligible population has so far received both doses of vaccine.