COVID cases in Odisha will touch 11K by June 6: IIT Delhi

Bhubaneswar: The recent COVID projection report by IIT Delhi delivers a bombshell.  COVID positives in Odisha will cross the 10K mark in June first week. The number of corona positives as on May 15 in the State are  at 737.

As per IIT Delhi's projection, based on AICSEIR model, the number of coronavirus positives in Odisha will touch a whopping 11,283 by June 6. The country's lead research institute has made this prognosis taking into account the State's COVID positive cases as on May 12.

A glance at the IIT-Delhi's new projection shows that Odisha has outsmarted the earlier prediction made by the IIT-D team. When IIT-D had earlier projected 365 positive cases for Odisha by May 12, the actual cases confirmed by the date in the State stood at 437. Therefore, in its revised projection, the COVID positives in the State are projected to touch 11, 283 by June 6.

IIT-D prognosis Rooted In Ground?

Consider this. During the period of May 1- 15, the number of COVID cases in Odisha had grown by over 378 per cent. Cases grew nearly 5 times to touch 737 by May 15. The cases on May 1 were 154.

However, IIT-D has projected that the total COVID positive cases in Odisha will see a 15-times rise during the upcoming period of 22 days (May 15-June 6).

Since Odisha saw this stupendous rise in COVID positives owing to large-scale return of migrant workers to the State, and with the number of workers still waiting to return to the State stood massively at over 5 lakh, the IIT-D projection looks very much rooted to ground.   

As per the data available with State health department, when 61,394 migrant workers have returned to Odisha, another 5.38 lakh registered in state government's COVID portal will return soon.

The IIT-D prediction for Odisha has taken into account the lockdown 4, which has been extended till May 31.

As per the State Health Department data, nearly 99 per cent of the newly n-CoV confirmed positives have been detected in the State from the quarantine centres, which eliminates the risk of widespread transmission. The numbers will see a big rise in the State, but without the vicious cycle of contact tracing.

The COVID prognosis model is developed by a team of IIT Delhi researchers, namely,  Hargun Singh Grover, Ravinder, Amreen Jan, Sourabh Singh, Suresh Bishnoi and Prof NM Anoop Krishnan, in collaboration with Prof Hariprasad Kodamana (CAPS, IITD) and Prof. Amit Sharma (ICGEB, New Delhi).