Karnataka: Health department to ensure broad-based testing after surge in cases

In a recently held meeting, the state appointed Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) had suggested the government penalise those not wearing masks in public places.

A child looks at her mother's hand after she received a dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Bengaluru (PTI, file)

3 min readBengaluruJun 28, 2022 07:12 AM IST First published on: Jun 27, 2022 at 11:06 PM IST

A total of 69 Covid-19 patients – 57 in general beds, two in oxygen-supported beds and 10 in ICU wards – are currently admitted in government hospitals in Karnataka.

Health commissioner Randeep D said, “We will ensure there is more broad-based testing of the contacts… All primary contacts irrespective of whether they are asymptomatic or symptomatic have to be tested. The hospitals have been told to test those with influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) symptoms. High-risk groups should not be left out since they are vulnerable. These have been reiterated to the state appointed Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) last week.”

In a recently held meeting, the TAC had suggested the government penalise those not wearing masks in public places.

Randeep said, “Penalising is a larger call of the government. However, the marshals are enforcing the wearing of masks in malls and public places. The health department is not authorised to penalise.”

Following the surge in cases, the health department has also written to the medical education department to keep beds ready to deal with emergency situations.

“We have written to the medical education department that beds at Bowring and Victoria hospitals have to be kept ready for Covid-19 patients. We have not fixed any number since the hospital admission is anyway low and we don’t want to get in the way of elective surgeries,” he added.

The health commissioner also said there was no indication of the arrival of the fourth wave. “This is more of a gradual rise in cases. We are glad that there is no new variant of concern and the recent genome sequencing report has pointed out the presence of BA.3, BA.4 and BA.5 which are contagious sub-lineages of Omicron. These sub lineages have triggered a higher number of infections.”

Notably, according to a June 23 report of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG), 44 samples from Bengaluru sent for genome sequencing between June 2 and June 9 were found to be infected with BA.3, BA.4 and BA.5 sub-lineages of Covid variant Omicron.

The total number of active Covid-19 cases in Karnataka is 4,288. On Monday, 617 fresh Covid-19 cases were reported in the state of which 592 were in Bengaluru alone. Also, 767 patients recovered from the disease during the day.

In the past two days, fewer Covid positive cases and daily tests were reported owing to a technical glitch in the ICMR portal.

“On Saturday, there was a technical snag with the data flow from the ICMR’s database due to which fewer cases were reported in the health bulletins. Due to this, we could not download the daily data of Covid-19 cases. Those cases which were not reported then have been added in the subsequent days,” a health official said.