Eager to open up, Karnataka looks only at the good corona numbers

Bengaluru: Forty days into the coronavirus lockdown, how you feel about the epidemic depends on what stats you’re looking at. The Karnataka government, eager to open up the economy, is surely looking at two very rosy numbers: the low rate of COVID-19 cases and the high rate of recovery.

As of Tuesday, the total number of COVID-19 positives in Karnataka stood at 659. However, active cases are only 335. If you looked at those figures, you’d say it’s justified to open up and go back to work.

However, other figures would tell you a different story. While the national Covid-19 mortality rate is 3.24 per cent, Karnataka’s is 4.14, which is more comparable to the mortality rate of 4.22 per cent prevalent in neighbouring Maharashtra, a state that’s being knackered by the virus.

More worrying for Karnataka, new areas are coming under the grip of COVID-19 by way of travel to Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, both hotspot states.

As a matter of fact, Karnataka has witnessed seven deaths since Friday, including that of a woman in Vijayapura who died on Tuesday. The woman reportedly had a history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchial asthma.

With her death the total number of deaths has risen to 28.

Besides, eight fresh corona positive cases were reported on Tuesday: three from Bangalore, two from Bagalkot, one each from Bellary, Dakshin Kannada and Uttara Kannada.

Of the three cases reported from Bengaluru, health officials are flummoxed by one of them, a 30-year-old pregnant woman. They don’t know where she got the virus from. She was indoors with her family at BTM Layout and had no external contacts. She tested positive when the Jayanagar private hospital she visited for a routine health check up conducted a Covid 19 test along with other routine tests and it came back positive.

Officials are planning to seal the private hospital at Jayanagar and are planning to quarantine all its doctors and staff who may have come in contact with the woman.

As the corona test was done at a private lab, officials have send the woman’s throat swabs of to National Institute of Virology at Pune for confirmation.

Another of the three fresh cases, this one from Ballari, is of a 43-year-old male who had travel history to Uttarakhand. With no source of public transport, this person travelled in trucks carrying essentials. He tested positive when he landed at Ballari. 

The third case is from Gadag, another preganant woman. Two private hospitals in that town have been sealed after she tested positive. She had visited these two hospitals and had also visited her village in Ron Taluk at Gadag district. Officials have started to trace her contacts.

Just as Davanagere is on tenterhooks after 22 cases erupted there in one day, its neighboring town of Havari too has come up on the corona map of Karnataka. This too has a Mumbai connection just as Davanagere’s return to corona does. A 32-year-old man from Savanuru who had been working in Mumbai before the lockdown had managed to travel back to his village in a truck. Learning about his return two days later, health officials took his swab for testing. His test returned positive.

Mandya district has witnessed two more fresh positive cases from K R Pet taluk. It was a case where the body of a person who died of COVID-19 in Mumbai was brought to Mandya for cremation. Two women aged 19 and 20 years had traveled with the dead body and now, they have tested positive to COVID-19.

A man from Chincholi in Kalaburgi district who returned from Hyderabad some time ago has tested positive for COVID-19. So far, Chincholi taluk has been free from the coronavirus and the district administration has now turned its attention to Chincholi.