The city which was hailed at the early stages for its success for containing COVID-19 has seen a massive surge in cases in the last two weeks.
This was expected given the unlock phase 1 where people were bound to move from one region to another which would convert into a spike in the cases. The matter of concern for Bengaluru is the sharpness of this increase. In the last 11 days, the city has seen an increase of 9,427 cases which is 40 percent of the total cases reported in Karnataka. The city has seen at least 500 cases every day since the 27th of June.
As per experts, Bengaluru is a perfect case study of things going wrong. The president of the Public Health Foundation of India, Professor K Srinath Reddy has attributed the increase to two reasons – people failing to adhere to social distancing norms and the lack of preparedness by authorities.
People Not Following Rules
According to Reddy, there are crowds in shopping areas, political, social, and religious gatherings that involve close contact. This is easy for the virus for the transmission. Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa had expressed his concern over the misuse of the relaxations by people and he blamed the people violating quarantine rules for the rise in cases.
The change in the quarantine rules for inter-state travelers was also a reason for the rise in cases. People who were advised home quarantine were not adhering to the rules.
Testing Problem
The COVID-19 positive rate i.e. number of positive cases per 100 tests has spiked in Bengaluru and is higher than the national average. On Tuesday, it reached 8.5 percent. As per experts, the high positive rate describes a low number of tests conducted. However, some argue that it is just that more people are being infected in the city.
Currently, the state is testing only 15,000 samples per day which are lower than Delhi and Tamil Nadu. The BBMP had said that it would conduct 7,500 random tests in the city from June 22nd. However, it has only managed to conduct 23,000 tests between June 22 and June 28.
Unknown source of infection
There has been a surge in cases that has neither a contact history nor travel history. Many cases have been attributed as Influenza Like Illness and Severe Acute Respiratory Infections that raises major concerns as contact tracing will go for a toss now.
Shortage of Beds
There have been several reports of patients not finding beds in hospitals and hospitals turning away patients. Many of them have succumbed to search for hospitals and beds. However, Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar claims there is no shortage of beds. Bengaluru has opened up a 10,000 bed COVID Care facility.
As cases continue to surge, there might be another lockdown on the cards for the city as pressure builds on CM Yediyurappa.
Source: Huffington Post
