Speculation rife as state withholds COVID-19 infection data in midday update

States with high caseload like Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu do not mention the source of infection and travel history of COVID-19 patients in their daily media bulletins. When Karnataka followed suit in its afternoon update on Wednesday, speculation was rife on social media on whether it was an indication of an explosion of infections in the coming days.

Contact history and travel history are crucial in understanding the circumstances under which patients became light spreaders, spreaders, and super-spreaders in various districts.

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A tweet by the health department's official Twitter handle @DHFWKA said, "Bulletin's format has been changed from today" This tweet took the twitterati by surprise.

Among a flood of tweets, Dr Rajath Athreya, a neonatologist wrote, "It would really help to go back to old formats and that healthcare community also needs to know if new cases are from clusters/contacts/travel or if it is in a patient with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) or influenza-like illness (ILI)."

Another Twitter user @gparnaik wrote, "Till now they were blaming travellers for being the reason for spread, may be it is not the case anymore. Simple, hide the data. Who will dare question them right?"

@sumanthsharmas tweeted, "Are you hiding information purposefully?"

On Tuesday, the state, for the first time, saw 149 cases in a single day. The state has already stopped mentioning which patients are in the ICU and only gives out the total number.

Putting all speculation to rest, the evening bulletin was released with all travel history and contact history details of individual patients. Minister Suresh Kumar said, "We do not intend to cover up any data and are not embarrassed about it. It is getting difficult to spell out all details by noon for our staff. But hereafter, we will release it in the form of annexures at noon itself."

Health Commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pandey said, "Karnataka is one of the five states in the country that gives a midday update. We do not want to get the counting wrong when there are close to 100 cases because the media will question us. That is why we did not release the data on Tuesday afternoon. We need to be appreciative of the state's efforts at transparency."