Dikhyaa Mohanty 
As per an analysis by SBI Research, the rural cases in Odisha take a high share of 61 percent in January and as a consequence, the State has been ranked 6th in the country in the indicator of the rural spread of the third wave.
According to the reports Rajasthan leads the table by virtue of having nearly 75 percent of new cases in the third wave from the rural areas, it is followed by the states like Andhra Pradesh (73 percent), Bihar (68.9 percent), Jammu and Kashmir (66.6 percent), Himachal Pradesh (61.1percent), the report revealed. As per the latest SBI report, urban areas in Odisha accounted for 39 percent of the new cases in the third wave, as against 61 percent share by rural areas.
Further as per SBI data, 67.4 percent of the new cases (based on the weekly moving averages) in January are from urban areas in the country. The share of rural areas in daily caseload nationally has been only 32.6 percent. But the scenario in Odisha presents a different story.
Further, Odisha has reported a higher spread in urban areas during the third wave vis-a-vis the earlier two waves of the pandemic. The total daily cases in urban areas in the peak month (September 2020) of the first wave were 19.6 per cent of the State’s daily caseload.
In the second wave, as per SBI data, the Odisha urban burden in the first month of the second wave was 21.3 per cent of the daily cases. However, in the peak month of May, rural cases rose to a new height but urban caseload dropped. In the peak month of May 2021, the share declined to 17.7 per cent of the State’s total daily caseload. But in the third wave, the urban share is a high of 39 percent.
