Covid-19 positivity rate decreasing in Karnataka as testing drops

Health Minister K Sudhakar said the positivity rate in the state was decreasing and described it as a good sign

Although the daily coronavirus cases in Karnataka have been witnessing a decline over the past few days, the high positivity rate was a major concern until last week.

In the list of states with the highest positivity rates, Karnataka (32%) had the second-highest positivity rate in India after Goa (43%) between May 7 and May 14.

Experts say a high positivity rate indicates that the state is testing only the ones with symptoms and needs to ramp up its efforts in tracking the infected population and isolating them.

According to a Times of India report, during the May 7-14 period, Karnataka had over 5.7 active Covid-19 cases — highest in the country — ahead of both Maharashtra and Kerala where the cases were seen plateauing.

During the last two days, Karnataka has reported over 30,000 fresh cases, which was around 40,000 last week. The state had reported 50,112 fresh infections on May 5, the number dropped to 35,297 on May 13 raising questions on the low number of testing.

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While 1,77,982 samples were tested on May 1, the number dropped to 1,18,345 on May 15, according to The Indian Express report.

However, Health Minister K Sudhakar has said the positivity rate in the state was decreasing and described it as a good sign, as he ruled out any correlation between the decline in the number of testing and the positivity rate coming down.

"Despite doing symptomatic tests if the positivity rate is decreasing, it is a good sign," he told reporters.

The state registered 28,869 new infections, which was outnumbered by recoveries with 52,257 discharges. However, the number of fatalities continued to remain high at 548, the health department said on Thursday. While the positivity rate for the day stood at 23.91 per cent, the case fatality rate (CFR) was at 1.89 per cent.

(With PTI inputs)