BENGALURU: Karnataka recorded 11 more COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, taking the total tally to 523. The good news is that the state has hit a double century in the number of discharged patients, which had reached 207.
Among the 11 positive cases, six are from Kalaburagi, three from Jamakhandi in Bagalkot, one from Bengaluru Urban and one from Gadag.
The six patients from Kalaburagi are contacts of a 26-year-old female who tested positive earlier. They are a 55-year-old male, 40-year-old female, 43-year-old male, 28-year-old female, 45-year-old female, 22-year-old female.
In Bengaluru urban, 48-year-old male from Padrayanpura ward containment zone tested positive. And in Gadag, a 75-year-old male who tested positive had a history of SARI.
Primary and Secondary Education Minister Suresh Kumar disclosed that the state government has decided to start random sampling in the two hotspots of Hongasandra and Padrayanpura. "We have started random sampling in these two places. In the last two days, 145 samples were taken in Hongasandra while 70 samples were taken in Padrayanpura and fortunately all of them tested negative," he said.
In Jamakhandi in Bagalkote, two of the cases are contacts of a 47-year-old female who tested positive earlier. They are a 20-year-old female and 22-year-old male. Another case is of a 11-year-old who is a secondary contact of a 46-year-old male who tested positive earlier.
Talking about the containment zones in the state, Kumar said, "There are 120 such zones identified in the state and the number of patients from these are 436. There are 72,611 houses in the containment zones and the population comes up to 4,07,811 and 5931 shops and offices are in these respective zones. In buffer zones, 7,69,342 houses have been identified and the population is large with 36,39,304 and shops and offices come to 65,385."
Talking about the increase in tests, Commissioner of Health and Family Welfare, Pankaj Kumar Pandey, said, "Till April 9-10, we were testing only 500-600 samples a day but now it has been increased to 4827 samples in a day. We are looking to increase the number more in the coming days. We have enough number of RT-PCR kits and we can continue to do more tests."
Regarding the rapid testing kits sent to NIMHANS for validation, Pandey said, "The 200 kits which were being validated did not show good results and ICMR was informed about it. The other 2 lakh kits ordered have been cancelled."