BENGALURU: After two days of respite when the state reported Covid-positive cases of around 5,000 a day, there was a sudden spurt on Tuesday with 8,161 positive cases, taking the total to 2,91,826 cases. Bengaluru accounted for 2,294 of these cases. The high numbers are also because of 1,331 cases reported from Mysuru, which were a backlog of the last four days.
Experts, however, told TNIE that it is too early to say whether the state is nearing the peak or has already reached the peak.Dr Giridhara R Babu, member, Covid-19 Technical Advisory Committee, said, “By looking at cases reported on a single day we cannot say if we are near the peak or have already peaked. We need to get a moving average of the next five to seven days to judge the peak.
A sudden spike in cases can be due to a backlog of samples, increased testing as a fresh batch of testing kits has arrived or even due to extra efforts by the state government in conducting surveys to identify ILI and SARI cases.” It cannot also be attributed to big gatherings of people for Ganesh Chaturthi over
the weekend. It needs to be observed if the trend continues over the next few days, he said.
The state reported its highest daily toll of 148, and of them, 61 were from Bengaluru. Two were brought dead to hospital. The total toll now stands at 4,958. On the positive side, 6,814 people were discharged on Tuesday, with the total crossing the two-lakh-mark at 2,04,439. Of the 82,410 active cases, 751 are in ICU, with Bengaluru accounting for 327 of them.
Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar tweeted, “Karnataka crossed 25 lakh tests today and the recovery rate surpassed 70 percent. Today,we conducted 25,13,555 tests across 108 labs in the state. Karnataka’s COVID mortality rate stands at 1.7 percent and Bengaluru’s COVID mortality rate stands at 1.57 percent.” Going by the August 24 data, the positivity rate since the onset of the pandemic is 12 percent and the state stands at the sixth spot on the number of Covid tests done per million population at 40,140. The state’s doubling rate is 12 days now.
Analysing the risk
The Joint Expert Committees of the Health Department and Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences have conducted a risk categorisation for Covid-19 in order to carry out rigorous tracing, testing of the vulnerable population, and high-risk groups for initiating early treatment and minimising progression to a severe stage