BENGALURU: From the initial high point of managing the dreaded pandemic, Karnataka has considerably slipped, allowing the Covid-19 tally to rise to 96,141 as on Sunday — but some improvement is noticeable over the last few days.
To assess how the state slipped in its management from its initial successes (if one may call it that), here is a lay-down: The first Covid-19 case in Karnataka was reported on March 8. Since then, till Saturday, 96,141 cases have been reported — in just 140 days!
Roping in private medical colleges and hospitals, and increasing the tests per day contributed to pushing up the tally significantly. But the lifting of the lockdown restrictions in the first week of May, and the unimpressive public reaction to it, saw a big jump in numbers, forcing the government to impose another lockdown, this time for a week.
With the state increasing the number of Covid tests, with daily tests rising to 21,509 RT-PCR and other tests and 11,256 recently-added Rapid Antigen Detection Tests — the total coming to 11,43,262 — the number of patients testing positive, too, has increased, and the total active cases have stood at 55,388.
However, lately, whether one may call it a direct impact of stricter measures or not, a marginal improvement is noticeable. Though the positivity rate has been steadily rising from 3.32 per cent on July 5 to 7.95 per cent on July 25, the recovery rate too has shown improvement. From July 21, the recovery rate has been looking up after steadily slumping since July 5, from 41.94 per cent to 35.29 per cent on July 20. But on July 21, it rose slightly to 35.82 per cent, and since then, has been steadily rising. On July 22, it recorded 35.91 per cent and has steadily gone up to 37.11 per cent on July 25.
Another heartening sign is the falling mortality rate. Though it was around 1.80-1.90 percent in the first week of July, it worsened, increasing to 2.08 per cent on July 20, improving to 2 per cent two days later, and then wavering between 1.99 and 2 per cent for a couple of days to improve to 1.97 per cent on July 25.
