BENGALURU: It is not just airports, the Karnataka government will now conduct surveillance of interstate travellers arriving at bus stands and railway stations, too, where passengers will have to produce negative RT-PCR reports. Interstate border checking is also set to become more stringent.
This was among several decisions taken at a high-level meeting chaired by Health and Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar, and attended by senior officials of Health department, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) and state Covid Technical Advisory Committee, on Friday.
Bringing back the isolation measures used during the previous two pandemic waves, Sudhakar said that once a person tests positive, the command centre will call them, do tele-triaging and guide them for isolation or hospitalisation. Around 10,000 house surgeons will be part of the tele-counselling and tele-triaging, which will become important towards January-end when the state expects hospitals to get overwhelmed.
“Though the Central government policy is to only test symptomatic contacts of Covid patients, Karnataka has gone a step further and decided to test all primary contacts. We are mulling over introducing a green pass or universal vaccine pass for people to enter public places, such as metro, bus, malls, theatres, markets, restaurants, etc,” he said. Karnataka has achieved 99 per cent coverage of the first Covid dose and 80 per cent of the second dose, ranking third in the country.
‘No lockdown planned’
Karnataka still has a stock of 64.27 lakh doses. Guidelines will be issued on who is eligible for hospitalisation as 85 per cent of the people currently positive are asymptomatic. VIPs, business people and those with influence and contacts will not be allowed to secure hospital beds needlessly. All hospitals, especially in Bengaluru, will have nodal officers from the Indian Police Service (IPS), Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Bengaluru Water Supply & Sewerage Board (BWSSB), Bengaluru Electricity Sypply Company (Bescom), or Arogya Mitra to ensure seamless bed allocation.
“We expect 5 per cent of the cases to require hospitalisation. Due to our good vaccine coverage, the numbers needing beds will be less. We need to monitor the remaining unvaccinated population. Uniform treatment protocol, discharge policy and quarantine guidelines will be released,” Sudhakar added. As per data shared by him, only 831 people have been admitted to hospitals out of 17,414 active cases (data as of January 5) and 700 are using general beds without oxygen.
At the meeting, the officials took stock of the medicines, testing kits, reagents, masks, and PPE kits available and the requirements that need to be procured. In the last two waves, fake news on Covid was spread on social media. This time, the government intends to take action against those who indulge in such mischief. A panel of experts will be appointed as official spokespersons to speak to the media and public on Covid. Rubbishing rumours of a lockdown, Sudhakar said no such move is being planned by the government as it will affect the lives and livelihoods of people.