'High surveillance' yielding more Covid cases in Mysuru

Mysuru district has not improved on the Covid-19 front despite all the efforts to check its spread and treat infected persons.

The district still ranks second in the number of active cases, followed by the Bengaluru Urban district.

On the population index, Mysuru (30,01,127) is third in Karnataka, followed by Bengaluru (96,21,551) and Belagavi (47,79,661), as per the 2011 Census.

Besides, Hassan (17,76,421), which ranks only 14 in population is in the third place going by active Covid cases. On June 6, Bengaluru Urban had 1,17,340 active cases. With a death toll of 187 on the same day, Bengaluru Urban recorded a total death toll of 14,875. On the same date, with 1,237 news cases of infection, the number of active cases increased to 14,416 in Mysuru. With 19 deaths, total deaths increased to 1,722.

Read | Bengaluru's Covid-19 fatality rate above Karnataka average despite drop in cases

The total number of Covid cases reported up to June 6 in Bengaluru Urban is 11,83,126, Mysuru 1,50,885 and Hassan 90,492. However, on the Covid vaccination front, Mysuru has fared well with 9,42,712 doses as of June 6, while Belagavi district has administered 7,75,985 doses. Hassan district has administered 4,46,686 vaccines.

District vector-borne diseases control offer Dr S Chidambara said there were two reasons for these numbers.

“First, the second wave started early in places with more population - such as Belagavi district, bordering Maharashtra. The decline started over a fortnight ago in Belagavi. Thus, saturation is expected in Mysuru by a delay of 15 days. The second reason is that there is aggressive surveillance in Mysuru compared to other districts,” he said.

Dr Chidambara, also the district surveillance officer, said that there was no Mysuru-specific cause for the high numbers of infection, except for intensive intervention, tracing and testing.

“It is community spread. However, it is good to trace more cases for early intervention. On June 5, out of 7,715 tests, 1,416 persons were found to be positive. A door-to-door survey is being conducted in Mysuru city,” he said.