Odisha has achieved a significant milestone in its fight against covid-19 by conducting 1 lakh sample tests during the last 48 hours. With 9,08,508 tests conducted so far, the state is close to crossing another milestone of conducting 1 million total tests till date.

Odisha's tally of coronavirus positive cases has reached 60,050 with the state reporting a single day spike of 2924 cases yesterday. 42,277 infected persons have also been recovered living behind 17377 active cases.

Amid the daily surge in positive cases, the state government has gone into an overdrive in daily tests as well. This has led to better infection discovery paving the way for strategising the isolation and treatment of the new cases.Ganjam district, which was the the topmost Corona hotspot in the state a couple of weeks ago, now leads the test- tally with 14953 sample test in just 2 days.

A positive outcome of the ramping up of tests has made Ganjam report a falling trend in positivity rate, now down to 3.6 % against the state equivalent of 5.5% as on Sunday.

Besides, the covid care architecture in the state has also been able to pin the case fatalities down to 0.58 per cent, the lowest in the country thus far.

Meanwhile in Bihar, the number of Covid-19 cases has risen to over one lakh. With reporting of 2,187 fresh cases during the past 24 hours, the total number of cases has risen to 1,04093 in the state.

Bihar has become the eighth state in the country to cross the 1 lakh mark of Covid patients. 72566 patients have been discharged and 30989 are undergoing treatment in hospitals. 537 patients died due to Corona. Recovery rate is 70 percent.

Principal secretary Pratyaya Amrit said the positivity rate in the state declined to 3 percent with ramping up of testing.

Meanwhile, on a continuous positive path of slide in its COVID-19 Case Fatality Rate, India has one of the lowest mortality globally. It stands at 1.93%, as of today. This is a result of coordinated efforts of the Centre and State/UT governments which has led to a continuous decline in the Mortality Rate.

USA crossed 50,000 deaths in 23 days, Brazil in 95 days and Mexico in 141 days. India took 156 days to reach this national figure.There has been sustained focus of the Union and the State/UT governments on improved and effective clinical treatment in hospitals, supervised home isolation, use of non-invasive oxygen support, and improved services of the ambulances for ferrying patients for prompt and timely treatment.

Tireless efforts of ASHA workers have ensured effective surveillance and tracking progress of the patients in supervised home isolation. Clinical management skills of doctors treating COVID-19 patients have been upgraded by active technical guidance through tele-consultation sessions by domain knowledge experts from AIIMS, New Delhi. These measures have collectively ensured seamless and efficient patient management from home to hospital for critical and severe patients. This has ensured that India’s Case Fatality Rate (CFR) is maintained below the global average.

With efficient and aggressive testing India is rapidly moving towards completing 3 crore COVID tests; 2,93,09,703 samples tested so far. 7,46,608 tests were done in the last 24 hours.

This has been made possible by a rapidly growing national network of diagnostic labs which comprises 969 labs in the government sector and 500 private labs, adding up to 1469.

The different types of labs include:

• Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 754 (Govt: 450 + Private 304)

• TrueNat based testing labs: 598 (Govt: 485 + Private: 113)

• CBNAAT based testing labs: 117 (Govt: 34 + Private: 83)crosses 1 lakh mark