Home quarantine is the future, guidelines soon: Karnataka Minister K Sudhakar

Karnataka is heading towards a ‘home quarantine’ regime to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic because of the immense stress on the infrastructure available to put travellers under institutional quarantine, Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar said Saturday.

“We have a limitation for institutional quarantine. If travelers start coming in lakhs of numbers, we don’t have enough facilities. Then, we will have to resort to home quarantine, which will be the ultimate, practical and pragmatic solution,” Sudhakar, who looks after COVID-19 affairs in Bengaluru, said during a live Facebook interaction hosted by Deccan Herald.

“We’re creating all the models for it on how effectively surveillance can be done and implemented. In a day or two, detailed guidelines will be issued. We’ve had a detailed discussion on this with the chief minister,” Sudhakar said.

Karnataka has seen a huge surge in its COVID-19 tally, which is largely due to inter-state travellers testing positive. According to data by the State COVID-19 War Room, there are 1.15 lakh inter-state travellers currently under institutional quarantine. The government has approved another 1.23 lakh people to come into the state.

Sudhakar said the high numbers over the past couple of days is not a cause for concern. “There’s no community spread,” he said. “These are cases of people migrating from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. We knew this would happen, but the government took a considerate view in the interest of these people,” he said, adding that out of about 1,000 positive cases since May 1, some 500-600 were inter-state travellers.

“About 40 per cent of people travelling from Maharashtra are testing positive,” he pointed out, “and that’s why cases in Mandya and Chikballapur have gone up.”

Revising its standard operating procedure, the government has now mandated a 7-day institutional quarantine for people coming from the high-risk states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, followed by a 7-day home quarantine. Those coming from other states will be home quarantined.

“Handling COVID-19 will be different going forward,” Sudhakar said. “Coexistence is the only way forward with the right health and hygiene protocols.” He added that a vaccine for COVID-19 will take “not less than 8-10 months.”

He also ruled out herd immunity. “Herd immunity develops when at least 60% of the population gets infected. For Karnataka, that’s about four crore people. Let’s not even think of it,” he said.