BENGALURU: The Padarayanapura locality, which has been sealed since April 10 after the outbreak of Covid-19 and has caused much worry to Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike authorities, will no longer see random testing. The locality accounts for 12 per cent of Bengaluru’s total cases. Due to the outbreak, BBMP had begun random sampling of the residents.
So far, there have been 67 cases, including policemen posted at JJ Nagar police station, in that area. There are eight active cases, including that of corporator Imran Pasha. “Owing to the huge number of samples and shortage of collection kits, random testing will stop for now. The BBMP will, however, continue testing emergency and suspect cases.
So far, over 1,200 random samples have been collected from this area,” a source said. However, another BBMP official pointed out, “We are not stopping because of excess samples or shortage of kits. We had a target in terms of testing to understand the extent of cases and transmission. Only three cases returned positive from the random sampling and a few more results are awaited in the next two days.
The outbreak is controlled, so we are stopping random sampling.” BBMP Special Commissioner (Finance) Dr Lokesh M, who is also one of the nodal officers for COVID-19 in Bengaluru, said, “Random sampling was done to judge the level of infection in that area and hardly a few cases were reported. The infection is not prevalent and has been contained well now. Our protocol now is to only test people with symptoms in all areas. The decision to stop random testing is not because of excess swabs or shortage of kits. All the swabs collected have been tested.”