BENGALURU: Reverse migration to Bengaluru in June and increased mobility within the city after Unlock 1.0 have pushed the state capital into the worrisome community transmission stage of Covid-19, officials fighting the pandemic in the city have said. The influx into Bengaluru, mainly from Mumbai and parts of Maharashtra via Udupi and Belagavi by road, and workers returning by trains from Danapur in Bihar and Howrah in West Bengal, have added to the city’s population of 1.23 crore with a population density of 17,385 people per sqkm.
The Covid war room figures pertaining to Bengaluru show that the management teams have been unable to trace the contacts of 503 patients who added to the tally on Tuesday and 735 on Wednesday — an indicator of community transmission. The cases in Bengaluru have been spiralling at a phenomenal rate, the highest spike being 30.93% on June 28, when the numbers shot up from 2,531 to 3,314 in just one day.
The surge in cases in the city was witnessed when numbers went up by 144 on June 26 and by 596 on June 27, followed by 783 on June 28 and 738 on June 29. On the day prior to when the Health Department stopped revealing the source of transmission, a majority of Bengaluru’s 144 cases had Influenza-Like Illness and several whose contacts were still being traced. Experts too have not been able to narrow down on the source of transmission.
‘Goal is to cut mortality’
“We should review testing and contact tracing. Tremendous resources are being utilised to test contacts, which can be used elsewhere. We suggested that testing be limited to people who have symptoms and contacts categorised as high-risk in terms of age and co-morbidities, instead of every primary contact. Or else, there is no end to this. It will stretch our resources to the maximum and our system will collapse,” said a renowned doctor, who was at the meeting. Government sources too indicated that they were warm to the idea.
“The suggestions have been made based on the worldwide trend. We have crossed the stage where we have to worry about positive cases. The goal now is to reduce mortality. There won’t be a need to test asymptomatic persons. Even ICMR guidelines suggest that,” said a source from the government’s core Covid-19 team, insisting that contact tracing at this stage is of little use. The expert team suggested that only severely symptomatic patients should be hospitalised and those with moderate and mild symptoms should be kept in Covid Care Centres, while asymptomatic persons should be under home isolation.
“This would free up beds for the severely symptomatic patients with fever, sore throat, breathlessness, etc. An asymptomatic patient aged below 60 has high chances of not falling ill. There are asymptomatic patients occupying hospital beds, while those in actual need of constant monitoring, medication, care, are being denied beds,” said Dr Vivek Jawali of Fortis Hospital.
Dr Bhujang Shetty of Narayana Nethralaya added that symptomatic patients should be categorised as mild, moderate and severe to ensure availability of beds. Experts pointed out that Karnataka’s efforts in containing Covid-19 has been good so far, with the exception of last two weeks, and corrective measures, including better drugs, better testing norms, scaling up of manpower, etc., were the need of the hour.
“The CM will hold one more meeting with ministers and senior officials to deliberate on experts’ suggestions and a final decision will be taken. New guidelines on treatment protocols will be released soon,” said Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar after the meeting.
Govt re-circulates body mgmt norms
Following outrage over the recent handling of Covid-19 victims’ bodies during their burial, the state once again circulated norms on dead body management, which were issued in March.