MYSURU: Karnataka's Mysuru district saw a steep rise of five new COVID-19 positive cases on Saturday, taking the total infected tally to eight.
Four residents of Nanjangud town and one resident of Yaraganahalli in Mysuru city, who was employed at a Pharmaceutical industry in Nanjangud tested positive on Saturday. All the patients were contacts of Patient-52 (P-52), a 35-year-old man who tested positive recently.
The four patients were residents of Chamundi Pura extension, Ramaswamy layout, Govind Raj layout in Nanjangud while the other patient in a resident of Yaraganahalli new extension.
Confirming this, Deputy Commissioner Abhiram G Sankar said that Nanjangud Town is a cluster case now and containment measures will be initiated as per the procedure.
“Vehicular movement into and out of the town will be restricted from tonight. Measures are being put into place to contain the outbreak. Residents are requested to cooperate during these times of crisis,” he said. He further added that all the patients are stable and under isolation in a designated hospital.
Soon after the P-52 tested positive for COVID-19, the district administration had deployed health officials and screened hundreds of workers and was asked to remain under house isolation.
Karnataka reported 17 positive cases on Saturday, bringing the total number of positive cases to 81.
In today's list, one is a Bengaluru man with travel history to London, while eleven are contacts of a people who have tested positive earlier.
Among them, three are contacts of Patient 36 who is a 65-year-old male, resident of Uttara Kannada district with a history of travel to Dubai and arrived at Mumbai before travelling home by train.
54-year-old Patient 65 is the wife of P-36, while 28-year-old Patient 66 and 23-year-old Patient 67 are their daughters. All of them are isolated at a hospital in Uttara Kannada.
P-68, a 21-year-old male, is a resident of Bengaluru had a history of travel to London is the son of P-25.
Further, there are five patients who had contact with Patient 19, a 31-year-old male patient from Chikkaballapura with travel history to Mecca. Patient 69 is 23-year-old male, resident of Hindupur, Andhra Pradesh.
Talking about the five contacts of Chikballapura case, Additional Chief Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, Jawaid Akhtar said, "For this case, we have assigned a team where the officers have headed to Ananthpur and Chikballapur to trace more contacts. The directions have been issued to district authorities."
Further, he pointed out that all the primary contacts are being taken to government-supervised quarantine centre, especially the ones with high-risk contacts. "This is a new rule, the high-risk contacts will be taken to government quarantine centres and the low-risk contacts will be kept in hospital or guest houses which are government decided ones. And so far we have 1000 primary contacts of the positive patients."
Talking about the previous three cases of Mysuru, Tumakaru and Dakshin Kannada who had no travel history, he said, the contacts are yet being traced out.
"Each day is crucial for us and it is not just about one week. We need to be safe and take all the precautionary measures and 1,00,000 testing kits are being ordered which will show quick results, however, it is still under decision stage, depending on the kit's accuracy."