Worst over? Bengaluru sees fewest Covid-19 cases in 4 months

Public places have been witnessing high footfall in view of the festival season. The picture is from a temple in T Dasarahalli during the Bagalagunte Maramma fair on Monday. DH PHOTO/B H SHIVAKUMAR

Despite the heavy movement of people during the Dasara festival season, the number of new Covid-19 cases in Bengaluru and the state has steadily plummeted.

At the same time, Randeep D, Special Commissioner, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) said all resources and measures were still on standby to address a potential rise in cases after Deepavali.

On Monday, the Department of Health and Family Welfare disclosed an increase of just 978 new cases in Bengaluru Urban — the lowest single-day increase since July 7, when the city registered 800 cases. The trend in both the city and the state has been downward.

Over the last seven-day period, the number of statewide cases has dropped by 16.54%, in comparison to the one-week period which preceded it. In Bengaluru, the decline is even more dramatic with cases over the last seven days seeing a 19.2% decline compared to the previous week.

Dr Giridhar Babu of the state Covid-19 task force said that the low case numbers in Bengaluru were completely justified, as the city’s testing rates have been consistently high.

He, however, cautioned that the situation was less clear in other districts where testing was becoming primarily concentrated in district headquarters at the cost of other areas. Nevertheless, he added that we can expect to see low numbers persist for a time.

“It will be a plateau. But we still need to be careful because there is still about 20% of the population who are vulnerable to infection,” he said.

Randeep said that high testing in Bengaluru Urban coupled with high enforcement of social distancing norms had made all the difference.

“I don’t think there is any metropolis in the country which has the range of penalties that we do, but I think there is also an awareness of people to follow the norms. For example, footfall in malls even during the holidays was low compared to previous years and many theatres have not reopened,” he said.

Sanjeev Mysore, the convenor of the Jeevan Raksha Project, a public-private partnership analysing Covid-19 outbreaks across the country, expressed scepticism about the quality of testing in Bengaluru Urban.

“In August and September, the quality of testing was high and doing a good job of identifying people to be tested. People were being found before they could spread the disease on a wider scale. Commensurately, the number of active cases also started to come down. However, in October, there has been a dramatic decline in quality, primarily because they are trying to test anyone they can find,” Mysore said. “Poor contact tracing also did not help. We have to see what the situation is in November,” he added.

Randeep said that contact tracing had seen a substantial improvement lately. “Over 10 contacts per case on average are now being traced. This is leading to better tracking, testing and quarantine of contacts,” he said.