High-pitched campaigning ends for 5th phase, focus shifts to polling day on May 20
Campaigning for the fifth phase of Lok Sabha elections ended at 6 p.m. on Saturday.
In the sharpest single-day spike, the Omicron tally in the coastal State jumped to 61 on Wednesday with 24 more, including foreign returnees and community transmission cases, testing positive for the new variant of coronavirus, said State’s health authorities.
With the reporting of new cases, the cumulative tally has gone up from 37 to 61. The detection of as many as 19 locally transmitted variants has raised alarm in the State while five of the new infectees were foreign returnees.
Of the 218 samples sent to the Institute of Life Sciences (ILS), Bhubaneswar for genome sequencing, 24 were found to be positive cases.
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Earlier on 2 January, 23 Omicron cases (19 male and 4 female in the age group of 8 to 83 years) were reported from the State. Of the total cases, 7 were from Keonjhar district, 4 from Khordha, 3 each from Puri and Sambalpur, 2 each from Boudh and Angul and 1 each from Jagatsinghpur and Balasore districts.
The State had reported the first two cases on 21 December while five cases were recorded on 30 December. On December 26, four foreign returnees, 2 from Nigeria and as many from UAE, had tested positive for the Omicron variant. On December 23, two patients, aged 11 and 15, who recently returned from “non at-risk” country Nigeria, were also found infected.
Prior to that, two patients, aged 41 and 43, had tested positive for the Omicron variant on December 21, after returning to the state from Nigeria and Qatar.
Around 90% of Omicron patients are found to be asymptomatic and recovering fast in home isolation. However cases are likely to rise exponentially in the coming days as the mutant variant is highly transmissible. The health agencies are fully prepared to trace, track and treat the infectees of the new variants, said Health Services Director Bijay Mohapatra.
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