Minister allays fears over community transmission of coornavirus

Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar has rubbished the reports of possible community transmission of COVID-19 in Karnataka and attributed the rising cases to increased testing.

“People need not panic over the rising number of COVID-19 cases. All the positive cases are reported from either the containment areas or from those who recently returned from overseas and other states. The epidemic has not spread to the community in Karnataka,” the minister said in a statement.

He said that 64% of the total cases reported in the state were due to primary and secondary contacts and another 25% was due to infection from the travellers.

The minister said that the government is monitoring the situation in Bengaluru. “The spurt in the number of cases is due to scaling up of testing across Bengaluru. We have directed officials to conduct a swab test of all senior citizens in every house of the containment localities. Hopefully, by the end of May, Karnataka will have about 60 labs and the number of testing samples will be increased up to 15,000,” the minister added.