With incoming people into the state set to increase in the next few weeks, Karnataka stares at a shortage of beds at its quarantine centers. The health department officials confirmed it on Saturday.
Until the 30th of May, Karnataka has quarantined close to 1.1 lakh people across the state in its quarantine centers. Currently, the capacity of the quarantine centers of the state lies at 1.5 lakh beds. Omprakash Patil, the director of the Health Department, said that 73 percent of the beds have been occupied. According to the state health and family welfare department, there are 1,279 quarantine centers and the district administrators have been looking to expand the facilities but the director maintains it isn’t enough.
However, since there are people coming in and going out of quarantine centers, there is bound to be an overlap at a point and there is a high chance that the state might run out of quarantine centers. Keeping this in view, the state government had reduced the duration of institutional quarantine from 14 days to 7 days. The director Omprakash Patil said,
“People keep moving out of quarantine centers every day and this number keeps changing on a daily basis. In Kalaburagi alone there are 38,000 people in quarantine centers. On average around 2,000 to 4,000 people come in via flights every day. In the next two days, the guidelines for quarantine are expected to change.”
Protocol to change
On Friday night, the Karnataka government had announced that only passengers coming from six states that are under high risk – Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi – would have to undergo mandatory institutional quarantine. This development comes a day after the Karnataka’s law and parliamentary affairs minister JC Madhuswamy made a U-turn regarding banning the flights from five high-risk states.
According to the sources from the state Health Department, the state is contemplating doing away with institutional quarantine for people coming in from low-risk states. A senior official in the department said,
“This is because of the fear that even those who do not have the infection may get it at the quarantine centers. However, institutional quarantine has helped stop the spread of infection as many people are traveling from other states. The problem is how to monitor people if we do away with institutional quarantine and mandate home quarantine. This is also because 95 percent of those who tested positive are asymptomatic.”
Source: The News Minute
