New Covid cluster in Bengaluru; 116 fresh cases at Dharwad

A day after a medical college in Dharwad and a private boarding school in Bengaluru emerged as Covid clusters, 12 Kerala students of a nursing college in Anekal on the outskirts of Bengaluru tested positive for Covid. The Dharwad medical college reported 116 new cases on Friday.

The emergence of the clusters has added considerably to the daily Covid caseload of the state with Dharwad contributing 127 cases and Bengaluru adding 395 cases in the last two days. However, the Department of Information and Public Relations (DIPR) at Dharwad put the number of positive cases there at 182 in the last two days, differing from the figures issued by the Health and Family Welfare department.

As soon as the Dharwad medical college emerged as a super spreader, the district administration ordered shutting down of the OPD and banned the entry of visitors and inpatients’ attendants. Arrangements were made to collect throat swabs of the patients besides nearly 500 medical students and 3,000 staffers at the hospital.

In Bengaluru, students who tested positive, have been shifted to a medical facility at Jigani.

Anekal taluk officials told DH that the nursing college has more than 300 students of whom 50 were subjected to the test and 12 tested positive. “We will conduct tests on the others on Saturday,” the official said. A senior official of the college management told DH, “Students arriving from Kerala submitted Covid negative certificates on entering the campus. However, when we tested them again, they were positive,” the official said.

Launching containment measures, the Dharwad district administration declared a holiday for schools and colleges within a 500-metre radius of the medical college as a precaution. Deputy commissioner Nitesh Patil said cases are spreading fast and samples have been sent for genome sequencing. Results are expected by Saturday.

Of the 116 fresh cases detected on Friday, 25 are doctors and medical staff, prompting officials to shut down OPD services for three days. “We are going with a big bubble model wherein the infection will be contained within the hospital. We are also tracing primary and secondary contacts of the infected,” Patil
said.

Several patients who were diagnosed by the infected doctors and staffers have already been discharged and returned to their districts. “The doctors from the hospital also practise in several other hospitals and private clinics attending to scores of patients. Tracing all of them and subjecting them to tests will be a herculean task,” another official
said.