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In over 15 days, active cases in Karnataka have almost doubled from 5,824 on March 1 to 11,359 on March 18. While active cases remained below 7,000 till March 8, the number shot up from March 9 when the State started witnessing a spike in new cases.
In four days, active cases shot up by over a thousand and touched 8,114 by March 12, and further shot up to 10,220 on March 17. Nearly 72% (8,122) of the total active cases are in Bengaluru Urban district. This district had 5,189 active cases on March 9.
Highest during October
The number of active cases in the State rose from 97,815 on September 12, 2020 to 1,12,783 on October 3. After that, the State has been seeing a consistent decline, and the number of active cases reduced by 48%, dropping to 55,017 on October 31.
By the end of the year (as on December 31), active cases reduced to 11,271. This number reduced to 6,029 by January 31. In a month’s time by February 28, the number further decreased to 5,804.
TAC recommendations
Although the State’s COVID-19 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) had on March 15 recommended certain stringent measures, including restricting the seating capacity to 50% in cinema theatres and reverting to online mode for all classes except 10th and 12th standards, the government is yet to take a call. This has upset TAC members, who cautioned that the situation may worsen unless the government takes an immediate decision.
TAC member V. Ravi, who formerly headed the department of neurovirology at NIMHANS and is currently the nodal officer for genomic confirmation of SARS-CoV-2 in Karnataka, said there is a need for the government to initiate stringent measures immediately.
“People also have to take precautions on their own. Otherwise, it will be a repeat of what happened from July to November in the State last year. Apart from severe restrictions on all gatherings, the State should start imposing steep fines for not wearing masks. Testing, tracing and treating measures should be further intensified,” he said.
New cases
Meanwhile, Karnataka on Thursday reported 1,488 new cases of COVID-19, taking the total to 9,65,102. Of these, 925 cases are in Bengaluru Urban district.
With eight deaths, the toll rose to 12,415. This is apart from 19 deaths of patients due to non-COVID-19 reasons.
As many as 341 persons were discharged on Thursday, taking the total number of recoveries to 9,41,309. Of the remaining 11,359 active patients, 131 are being monitored in ICUs. While the positivity rate for the day stood at 1.59%, the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) touched 0.53%.
As many as 93,370 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, including 87,397 RT-PCR tests. With this, the total number of tests rose to 2,01,01,442.
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