Among all the cases in India, at least 38% of the cases have come from the three metro cities of Mumbai Delhi and Chennai. The country now has a total of 3.8 lakh cases. However, the city of Bangalore has restricted the cases below a thousand.
The total population of Bangalore is 1.3 crores which are on the same league as Mumbai with 1.8 crores and Delhi with 1.9 crores. And also the cases in the capital city of Karnataka have been reducing. For example, on June 15th Mumbai reported 1789 new cases and Delhi reported 1647 cases while the city of Bengaluru reported only 35 cases.
Contact tracing
Bengaluru’s low number of cases is not a miracle but is a result of planning, transparency, and effective tracking of the contacts. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the managing director of Biocon, says that the city of Bengaluru has the best tracing and tracking record. She said,
“Data shows that Bengaluru has done the maximum number of contact tracing. The ratio is that for every positive case they have traced 47 contacts. The city has made sure that every one of the patient’s possible contacts is Quarantined. This stringent step helped in controlling the outbreak. If you look at contact tracing in places like Mumbai the ratio is 1:3 compared to Bengaluru’s 1:47.
It is interesting to note how the government also send volunteers to pharmacies to check on which people were buying cough medicines, paracetamol, and antibiotics. Those people were traced and asked why they were taking those medicines. It was followed up to the minutest details.”
Leaving no case untraced
The city also employed leaving no case untraced strategy which has helped it contain the spread of the disease. According to Kiran Mazumdar shaw,
“They asked me a lot of questions-who did I meet? Which countries had I visited? Which country did a transit from or if I had flu-like symptoms? They made me fill forms and the skeptical me thought they would be just some documentation that would be kept aside. But to my surprise 3 weeks later I got a call from health officer called to check up on my health and asked me if I had flu-like symptoms and how I was doing.”
Testing
There have been concerns over the reduction in Karnataka testing numbers over the last few days. The city of Bengaluru has tested 64000 samples while Mumbai has tested 261210 samples and Delhi with 296697 samples. However, the medical education minister assured that the testing will be increased and the state will test at least 25000 samples per day.
Tech-driven Strategy
The city of Bengaluru has employed the correct use of technology and innovations to combat the COVID-19 crisis. Using a contact tracing app the establishment is able to track and trace COVID-19 patients and monitor them at-home quarantine. There are various other apps that have been specifically designed to keep a check on COVID-19.
All this has helped the city to contain the number of cases compared to that of other metro cities.
Source: The Print
