Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's home district Ganjam became the first in the state to record over 10,000 cases of COVID-19, besides reporting 94 deaths, an official said on Friday. Following the detection of 368 new cases, the districts tally increased to 10,364. Further, four patients died during the day, he said.
Though Odisha's first COVID-19 case was detected on March 15, Ganjam remained a green zone till the arrival of migrant workers, mostly from Surat in Gujarat. The district reported its first COVID-19 case on May 2 with two people who returned from Surat testing positive.
About 3 lakh migrant workers have returned to the district, officials said. Following the detection of the first case, the district's COVID-19 daily increase continued to rise, barring a day or two.
The district's tally breached the 1,000-mark on June 24 and it took 10 days to breach the 2,000-mark on July 4.
It went past the 5,000-mark on July 18 and it took another one week to reach 8,000-mark on July 25. The district's caseload reached 9,000 on July 27.
The caseload rose due to the increase of the tests based on door-to-door surveillance, said Ganjam District Magistrate VA Kulanhe.
The daily-rise in positive cases, however, is showing a downward trend over the last few days, he said. After the urban areas, massive health surveillance i sat present going on in the rural areas, he added.
The return of the migrant workers to the district accelerated the rise in cases, but reducing the institutional quarantine period to seven days from 14 and gross violation of home quarantine norms fuelled the jump, said Narayan Mishra, a retired doctor of the MKCG Medical College.
We have to wait for some more days to know the trend of the district, he said. Subash Chandra Sahu, another doctor, said the administration should disclose the number of samples being tested on a daily basis to understand the exact trend of the district.
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