Afshan Yasmeen
Bengaluru – Karnataka – India, 21 May 2020. Till the first week of April, Tablighi Jamaat attendees made up a major chunk of the COVID-19 positive cases in Karnataka. However, from 12 April onwards, the trend changed and those returning from Maharashtra have been contributing to the spike in numbers.
While 118 Tablighi Jamaat attendees and their primary contacts have tested positive so far, over 500 of the 1,040 persons who tested positive from 01 May are those who returned from Maharashtra. The first case of a person who returned from Maharashtra testing positive was on 12 April in Vijayapura. The 60-year-old woman spread the infection to 29 others.
Mandya, which is witnessing an influx of Mumbai returnees, recorded the first such positive case on 27 April. Then on, the number of positive cases in the district has increased to 201, with Mumbai returnees making up 90% of this number.
On Thursday, the number of active cases in Mandya was 176, which is higher than that in Bengaluru (122). While inter-State travellers contributing to the spike was expected, the State health authorities are now worried about the increasing number of Maharashtra returnees testing positive.
Districts such as Haveri, Yadgir, Koppal and Raichur, which had not reported any cases till April-end, are now doing so with migrants returning from Maharashtra testing positive. On Thursday, 96 of the total 143 positive cases were linked to travel from Maharashtra.
Terming the contribution of Maharashtra returnees to the spike in numbers a “worrisome” trend, C N Manjunath, director of Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, said, “Maharashtra returnees’ contributing in such big numbers was not expected.
All our early interventions have now been washed away because of the influx of people from Maharashtra.” Dr Manjunath is the nodal officer for lab testing in the State’s COVID-19 task force.
143 new cases
On Thursday, 143 new cases were reported in the State, and 121 of them were inter-State travellers. As many as 43 of the 143 patients were minors.
While 96 were travellers from Maharashtra, six were from Tamil Nadu, three from Jharkhand, five from Telangana, two from Rajasthan, one each from Chhattisgarh and Kerala, and seven from the United Arab Emirates.
With this, the total number of positive cases in the State is 1,605. This includes 41 COVID-19 deaths, one non-COVID-91 death, and 571 people discharged.
Mandya reported the highest number of cases on Thursday. As many as 29 of the 33 new cases there had a travel history to Maharashtra. Udupi followed with 28 cases. However, two of these had been quarantined at Sirsi in Uttara Kannada and have been shifted to a COVID-19 hospital in Karwar.
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