For the second consecutive day, the daily Covid-19 tally in Odisha dropped below the 10,000 mark on Saturday with the State reporting 8,845 new cases of infection in the past 24 hours.
On Friday, 9833 Covid-19 cases were reported from different parts of the State.
The I &PR department on Saturday informed that out of the 8845 new Covid-19 cases, 972 were from the 0-18 years age group. Khordha district topped the chart with 2528 new cases of Covid-19, followed by 1001 cases from Sundergarh district, Cuttack (628), Mayurbhanj (152) and Nayagarh reported 194 new Covid-19 cases.
It is pertinent to mention here that Odisha State had witnessed a surge in the daily caseload since the last week of December 2021. Since January 12, the State has been reporting 10,000 plus daily Covid-19 cases.
On January 19, Odisha witnessed a sharp jump in its Omicron tally with 145 fresh cases of the highly contagious variant of the SARS-CoV-2. With the fresh addition, the Omicron tally in the State meanwhile had climbed up to 347.
The Institute of Life Sciences (ILS), Bhubaneswar had conducted genome sequencing of 249 samples from which the traces of Omicron strain was found in 145 samples.
All the samples were sent for genome sequencing between January 9 and 16, 2022. The State also recorded seven more deaths due to COVID19 taking the virus toll in the State to 8,514.