2 months after its first Covid-19 case, Bhubaneswar has no coronavirus positive patients

Odisha chief secretary Asit Tripathy said with the recovery of 3 people who had tested positive on May 8, all the 57 people in Bhubaneswar who had tested positive have recovered.

More than two months after it reported its first case of Covid-19, Odisha’s capital city Bhubaneswar on Monday, was declared free of any Covid-19 patients after the last 3 patients tested negative for the virus, a first state capital to attain this status.

Jagatsinghpur district was declared free of any Covid-19 cases with the recovery of 5 patients, but soon after 20 new people of the district, all migrant workers tested Covid-19 positive. (PTI PHOTO.)

Odisha chief secretary Asit Tripathy said with the recovery of 3 people who had tested positive on May 8, all the 57 people in Bhubaneswar who had tested positive have recovered. The 57 cases in the city had led to Bhubaneswar being tagged as a red zone in the MHA guidelines leading to several restrictions earlier.

Bhubaneswar had reported Odisha’s first Covid-19 case on March 15, when a 33-year-old student arrived in Odisha from Milan after spending 9 days in Delhi. Soon after, a 19-year-old youth studying in UK tested positive after his return to Bhubaneswar followed by a retired bank official. The cases then increased last month when 15 people in the city who came in contact with another person with travel history to Nizamuddin Markaz tested positive. Soon after a 60-year-old man in the city with no travel history tested positive followed by 6 members in his family and his tenant’s family.

During a special briefing, the chief secretary said Odisha has excelled and scored highly in several parameters as compared to the numbers at the national level in its fight against the pandemic. While India reported 712.7 Covid-19 positive cases per 1 crore population, Odisha reported 190.4 positive cases per 1 crore population. While 1,706 tests are conducted in India per million people, Odisha conducted 2,082 tests per million. The fatality ratio (deaths per 100 cases) for India was 3.15 while for Odisha it is 0.46, one of the lowest in the country.