After 22 weeks, Karnataka's daily Covid-19 cases drop below 1,000-mark

Karnataka on Monday reported less than 1,000 new cases for the first time in the second Covid wave. It reported 973 cases, a first since March 15 this year when 932 cases were reported.

Bengaluru accounted for 264 of these cases. The state had a positivity rate of 0.64% on Monday and active cases now stand at 18,392 with Bengaluru accounting for 7,343 of them.

Mysore Sanjeev, convenor, Project Jeevan Raksha, an initiative of Proxima, said that daily caseload dropping below 1,000 is a good sign. “It gives temporary relief for the administration. Sustaining this level of containment will be a challenge unless the active caseload drops below 10,000, not later than September-end.”

On February 2, the state had 5,924 active cases which is the least active caseload the state had after the first Covid wave ebbed.

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“From there it went up gradually and on May 17 we had a peak active caseload of 6,03,639. So unless the active cases drop below 500 like in other states we cannot say the second wave has ended,” he said.

“Notwithstanding whether case reporting is robust in these states or not, some of the other states have less than 500 active cases like for example, Punjab 392, Delhi 375, Uttar Pradesh 265, Gujarat 151, Rajasthan 108, and Madhya Pradesh has only 80 active cases. Punjab had a peak active caseload of 77,000 previously,” he said.

“We also need to remember that the state festival, Dasara, is round the corner. We need to learn lessons from last week Onam’s impact on Kerala’s Covid situation,” he added.

Dr C N Manjunath, a member of the State Covid-19 Technical Advisory Committee, said, “We have to observe for three consecutive days. If till Wednesday, we observe less than 1,000 cases and have less than 1% (TPR) then we can say we’re at the fag end of the second Covid wave.”

The number of tests remained high with 1,51,219 samples being tested on Monday.

Fifteen deaths were reported in the state with three deaths each reported from Bengaluru Urban, Belagavi and Udupi. The toll has reached 37,293. The case fatality rate was 1.54%.

After Bengaluru Urban, Dakshina Kannada reported the highest number of new cases at 193, Udupi 98, Hassan 74 and Mysuru 73. The total number of infections are now 29,48,228.

As many as 1,324 discharges took the total number of recoveries to 28,92,517.