Commuters wearing facemasks amid fears of the spread of the COVID variant JN1, near Metro station at Cubbon park in Bengaluru on Monday.
Credit: DH Photo by B K Janardhan
The number of daily Covid cases in the state has increased by nearly four times in the last 10 days.
According to the data released by the Health Department, the state recorded 78 cases on December 22 and this increased to 296 cases by January 1.
Senior officials of the department, however, attributed the increase in the number of cases to the increase in number of tests.
Following the scare about the new variant of the coronavirus, the state had ramped up testing and from December 22 to January 1, the number of tests have nearly doubled.
While the fast-spreading nature of the virus might call for more caution, experts said that there is no need to panic.
“With the increase in the number of tests, the number of cases is expected to go up. The positivity rate is also fluctuating between 2% and 6%. However, this is not very bothersome since the hospitalisations are still low,” a senior official said.
Only close to 5.3% of the active cases in the state are hospitalised and only 1.6% of the active cases are being treated in the ICU and such low numbers do not raise an alarm, the experts said.
“During the endemic phase, we need to keep a close watch on the hospitalisations rather than the positivity rate and the number of cases. Since there is no drastic spike in hospitalisation, there is nothing to worry about,” Dr K Ravi, chairman of the Karnataka Covid Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), told DH.