The state's health department said this will strengthen the Odisha Government's efforts to ramp up its coronavirus testing facilities.
The state cabinet on Thursday approved a proposal to purchase Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) recognised COVID-19 Rapid Testing Kit. In this connection one lakh rapid testing kits will be purchased to enable more COVID-19 tests to be conducted in the state.
The cabinet has approved a ratification proposal in Epidemic Act-1897, through an ordinance.
As per the ordinance, the amount of punishment has been enhanced in the Act.
Every offence shall be considered cognizable and bailable while the maximum punishment will be 2 years of imprisonment or a fine of Rs 10,000 or both
The state government also increased the corpus of its contingency fund from Rs 400 crore to Rs 2,000 crore to meet the urgent and emergent needs for containment management and measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and for treatment of patients. Since the Odisha Legislative Assembly is currently not in session, the ordinance will come into force.
With the cabinet''s approval of ratification in Odisha COVID-19, 2020 regulations, wearing masks in public places has become compulsory and a fine up to Rs 500 shall be imposed for not wearing a mask.
A 100-bed dedicated COVID-19 hospital has started functioning in the hostel of Centurion University in Gajapati District with joint collaboration of Odisha Hydro Power Corporation and Hi-tech medical College.
With this, the number of beds in COVID-19 hospitals at Cuttack, Jajpur, Keonjhar (Joda), Puri, Rourkela along with two hospitals in Bhubaneswar have reached 1,597.
Meanwhile, four new positive coronavirus cases were reported in the state, taking the total tally of infected people in Odisha to 48.
( With inputs from ANI )