Weekly News Roundup

State involves private hospitals in COVID treatment As COVID cases increased sharply, the state government notified 20 big corporate healthcare institutions that run a chain of hospitals as DCHCs (Dedicated COVID-19 Health Care Centres) and CCCs (COVID-19 Care Centres). The corporate facilities were asked to identify one branch each, that can be converted into a dedicated facility. The identified branches are expected to have good medical facilities in terms of beds, high-flow nasal oxygen wards, ICUs and ventilators. If private hospitals don't comply with the rules, the state government might take them over based on the Disaster Management Act, said…

COVID-19 cases cross 1000 mark in Bengaluru With 94 new COVID cases reported on June 20, Bengaluru became the third district in Karnataka to have over 1000 cases. As of Saturday, the city had 1076 cases and 61 deaths. It has had 319 containment zones overall, of which 279 are currently active. Tracking the source of infection has been a challenge in many cases. Another concern is that more police personnel are testing positive for COVID. As on Saturday, 39 personnel had tested positive and two had died. Bengaluru still has the lowest COVID burden among cities with population of…

Spurt in COVID deaths Although Bengaluru has a recovery rate of 51.4% with respect to COVID-19 patients, its death rate of 3.95% is the highest among districts in Karnataka. In comparison, the State's average death rate is 1.15%. The number of deaths has shot up in Bengaluru since June 1. According to the State health bulletin, of 581 positive cases in Bengaluru as on June 11, 23 have died. Of them, 13 died in June alone. Doctors say that the deaths are due to late reporting and referral by other hospitals, apart from severe co-morbidities. The deaths are expected to…

COVID cases spike After the relaxations made to inter-state and inter-district travel, 79 positive COVID cases were reported among returnees to Bengaluru between May 18 and June 3. Among them, 40 individuals were from Maharashtra, 12 from Delhi, eight from Tamil Nadu, two from Rajasthan and one from Andhra Pradesh. The remaining 16 cases are from other places, including other districts of Karnataka. A senior BBMP official said it is challenging to keep road travellers under check, as border controls were being ignored in many areas especially along Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh borders. While the BBMP has jurisdiction over…

Shorter hospital stay for COVID patients COVID-19 patients will have a shorter stay in hospital, with the state government changing its discharge protocols. From now, symptomatic patients staying in isolation facilities will be discharged 10 days after admission if they show no symptoms on the last three consecutive days and test negative. If they test positive, repeat tests will be done after 72 hours. Asymptomatic patients in isolation facilities will be discharged following a test seven days after admission, if the result is negative. Earlier, all patients had to spend a minimum of 14 days in hospital and a patient…

Migrant labourers suffer as BIEC shuts down Since Monday night, over 3,000 migrant labourers walked to BIEC (Bangalore International Exhibition Centre) but were not allowed in. Instead, they were made to board buses and dropped off back to the areas they had come from. Most buses were packed and did not follow the norms of mandatory sanitisers or the limit of 30 passengers per vehicle. K V Sharath Chandra, IGP, Central Range, said BIEC was meant to be a temporary shelter for those walking to their hometowns in north India, but that more people were coming in, thinking they'd be…

Special train passengers protest quarantine There was chaos as about 140 passengers who arrived in the first special train from New Delhi refused to check themselves into quarantine facilities in hotels. Many insisted that they should be allowed to self-quarantine at home, but officials refused. After a few hours, all passengers barring 19 agreed to the terms. The remaining 19 were sent back in the Bengaluru-Delhi train that left on Thursday. In all, 507 passengers opted for institutional quarantine of whom 203 availed free government facilities. The rest are in hotels identified by the BBMP, for which the passengers agreed…

Train services for migrants restarted, KSRTC services stopped On Thursday, state government gave directions to restart train services, following criticism of its earlier decision to cancel trains. On Tuesday, after a meeting with the representatives of the CREDAI (Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India) Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa said that the COVID situation was in control and hence economic activities had to be resumed. Trains were stopped to prevent migrant labourers from travelling back. With this, hundreds of migrant labourers from North Indian states began to walk towards their hometowns. Following public outrage against this, government then…

Lockdown relaxations in Bengaluru As Bengaluru (Urban) is categorised as a red zone district by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), relaxation in restrictions from May 4 will be minimal here unlike districts categorised as orange and green zones. However, Minister for Primary and Secondary Education, S Suresh Kumar, said Bengaluru will not be completely locked down, and that economic activities would restart in wards that do not have containment zones. He said restrictions will be more in the 24 containment zones in the city. State government has also categorised wards within the city as red, orange and green zones…

COVID-19 testing scaled up The number of tests for COVID-19 has been scaled up by five times, said Medical Education Minister Sudhakar K. He said that earlier, 200-300 real time RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) tests used to be conducted in the state everyday. This has been increased by around five times, to 1500 tests per day. Given the rate at which the disease is spreading, Karnataka needs to further ramp up testing but is ill-equipped for this, said health experts. There is shortage of PCR machines, testing kits, biosafety level-2 labs, and trained technicians. Sources admitted that the…