BENGALURU: Karnataka crossed the 1 lakh-mark for active Covid-19 cases on nine days in September. The highest figure recorded was 1,10,412 active cases on October 1 – 2.59% more than the previous day. However, experts say this is not a cause for concern as the long-term goal of reducing mortality is being met. They also said reducing active cases should not be the focus of Covid management.
Dr C N Manjunath, Director, Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research, who is also in charge of Covid testing, said active cases will increase as the positivity rate goes up, due to the detection of more positive cases. This is happening because testing has increased. “The state’s positivity rate has been constant — between 12 and 13 per cent. Active cases will grow parallelly to new cases. This helps early isolation at home or hospitalisation and will serve our long-term goal of reducing mortality,” he added.
Curbing transmission and not reducing the number of active cases is the goal, said Dr Giridhar Babu, Head of Lifecourse Epidemiology at Public Health Foundation of India, and a member of the Karnataka Covid Task Force. “If there are 100 infected people in a district, it is ideal but not possible to detect all. At least 80 will get detected and be isolated so they don’t spread the disease. The more cases we find, the faster we control the spread, and the quicker we can reduce the number of Covid deaths,” Dr Giridhar said, adding that controlling the number of deaths by finding more cases is the end goal.
Dr Manjunath also said home isolation needs to be monitored properly so hospital admissions go down along with the mortality rate. While the public is more aware now, there are cases of patients’ health deteriorating in home quarantine.“They take it for granted that they can beat the virus without being hospitalised and come only in the later stages, leading to death. This needs to be addressed,” he added.
To curb transmission through contact-tracing, districts such as Davanagere, Ramanagara, Bagalkot, Dharwad and Raichur been more successful than others. They were able to trace between 12.5 and 18.6 primary and secondary contacts per patient. Other districts such as Ballari, Chikkaballapur, Belagavi, Chikkamagaluru and Bengaluru, could trace between 3.8 and 6 contacts per patient.