Karnataka crosses 1,000-mark in daily Covid-19 cases for the first time in three months

For the first time in three months, Karnataka on Tuesday reported 1,135 cases of Covid-19 infection, with Bengaluru alone adding 710 new cases.

The last time Karnataka saw the numbers crossing the 1,000 mark was on December 25, when the state reported 1,005 Covid-19 cases.

Epidemiologist Dr Giridhar Babu said Tuesday’s numbers were a warning. “Contact tracing has to be expedited, as any delay will lead to higher reproductive number (R0). The R0 (average number of infections from one individual) for last week and this week shows that there is an increase in case spread,” he said.

He said there was an increasing trend in numbers, but it was not increasing exponentially. “We need to wait and see,” he added.

He said the increase has been more in Bengaluru and border districts like Dakshina Kannada, Bidar and Kalaburagi.

A significant proportion of new positives are asymptomatics, he noted. In Bengaluru, both urban and rural areas, have seen a rise.

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“In Bengaluru, among individual zones, the R0 is increasing from 0.2 to 0.4 and 0.5, all in a matter of a week. Even though it is less than one, the trend is that the case transmission is increasing. If the seven-day growth rate of the cases is exponential, that is if it doubles week to week, then it is alarming,” he said.

Dr C N Manjunath, the state Covid-19 Technical Advisory Committee member, said he had requested the chief minister to allow people with comorbidities in all age groups to be vaccinated.

“I have requested the CM to remove the age bracket in the comorbid category for vaccination. As high as 25% angioplasties have been done for people below the age of 45 at Jayadeva every year over the past four years,” he said.

Karnataka reported six new Covid-19 fatalities. The total number of infections has now risen to 9,62,339 and the death toll to 12,403. The day also saw 561 patients getting discharged after recovery taking the discharges to 9,40,489.

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Out of 9,428 active cases, 9,299 patients are in isolation at designated hospitals and are stable, while 129 are in ICU.

Three deaths were from Bengaluru Urban and one each from Dharwad, Kalaburagi and Mysuru. Mysuru reported 58 cases, Dakshina Kannada (50), Kalaburagi (46) and Bengaluru Rural (38).

A total of over 1,99,21,424 samples have been tested so far, out of which 68,469 were tested on Tuesday alone, and 6,485 among them were rapid antigen tests.