The health department had given southern districts revised testing targets to be followed for three days after the Mekedatu padayatra ended. But the districts are struggling to meet the targets.
As opposed to the revised target of 15,000, Kolar managed to test only 4,500 people and found 500-550 Covid-positive individuals, double the previous daily average of 200-250 cases.
Chikkaballapur did 6,000 tests out of the revised target of 10,000 and found 234 Covid patients. Bengaluru Rural was given a revised target of 15,000, but the district managed to collect only around 6,000 samples and detected 340 positives on Friday, and another 418 on Saturday.
Asked if contact tracing revealed domestic travel history to Ramanagara district where the padayatra had happened (before the state government banned inter-district vehicular movement), Kolar district health officer (DHO) Dr Vijaykumar S N said such individual cluster details had not been compiled.
“It requires a lot of time and resources, and we haven’t been told to undertake any such exercises.”
“We do have some cases with a Sabarimala travel history or of having been to Om Shakthi temple in Tamil Nadu. We used to have a daily target of 2,100. We can’t possibly test 15,000 per day,” Dr Vijaykumar said.
Travel history & testing
Chikkaballapur district surveillance officer Dr Ramesh Babu told DH, “We don’t have targeted line list of padayatra participants. We used to have a daily target of 2,900 which has been increased to 10,000. We achieved about 60% of the target. During contact tracing if they reveal their travel history, we test their contacts.”
Bangalore Rural DHO Dr A Thippeswamy said they previously had a target of 2,300 and that it wasn’t possible to collect the samples of 15,000 daily.
Mysuru DHO Dr K H Prasad said out of the revised target of 20,000 given to the district, they had tested about 11,000 and detected 580 positives. Previously, the district had a target of 6,000 samples.
“It’s very difficult to collect the samples of 20,000 people. We need people’s cooperation for that. There are some clusters on and off. We’ve made thousands of calls to patients and don’t know yet of any clusters due to the padayatra,” Prasad said.
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