A day after the Odisha Government lauded contribution of women in the fight against COVID-19, a disturbing report came to the fore that 35 per cent of the coronavirus patients were women in the State against the national average of 24 per cent.
The Government on April 11 named the prominent women like
NHM Director Shalini Pandit, RMRC Director Dr Sanghamitra Pati, AIIMS Director Dr Gitanjali Batmanabane OMCL MD Yamini Sarangi, Labour and ESI Principal Secretary Anu Garg, Misson Shakiti Commissioner Sujata Karthikeyan as Odisha’s frontline warriors against corona.
Data released by the Health and Family Welfare Department said the proportion of male Covid-19 positives in the State stood at around 64 per cent. Among the 54 positives, 35 are males and 19 women, including two minor girls aged 9 years and 5 years.
It also said that there was no woman Covid-19 patient in the age group of 60 years or above. A 51-year-old woman of Dhenkanal got infection from the Nizamuddin link.
What has worried health experts is that two of the women patients were below 10 years of age. Most of the female patients were in the age group of 30 to 50 years.
COVID-19 patients have been reported form nine districts, Khordha (41), Bhadrak (3), Kalahandi, Sundargarh and Kenddrapada (2 each), Cuttack, Jajpur and Puri (1 each). A patient from West Bengal’s Medinapur is in a hospital in Bhubaneswar.