As Karnataka crossed the 2.11 lakh mark in the number of COVID-19 cases on Friday, Bengaluru continued to be a significant contributor with a total of over 84,000 cases. While Bengaluru Urban has 84,185 total positive cases, Bengaluru Rural has 3,264.
Other districts with the highest number of total positives include Ballari (13,048), Mysuru (9,280), Kalaburagi (8,351), and Dakshina Kannada (8,373). The least number of cases have been reported in Kodagu district, which has 886 total positives.
Bengaluru’s journey to the top spot was primarily buoyed by the massive increase in cases in July. According to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) war room data, areas under the civic body had added 32,106 cases between July 1 and July 31. In June, the BBMP areas had 4,904 cases. As on May 31, it had only 386 cases. But the BBMP has attributed the spike in cases to increased testing too, among other factors.
As for deaths, Karnataka has 3,717 overall. Of these, 1,360 have been in Bengaluru Urban. Other districts with higher fatalities are Mysuru with 284 deaths, Dakshina Kannada with 254 deaths, and Dharwad with 222 deaths (as against 7,147 total positives). The least number of fatalities has been in Bengaluru Rural (10) and Kodagu (11).
Corresponding to its high number of positives, Bengaluru Urban also has the highest number of active cases — 33,432. Ballari has 5,952 active cases, while Belagavi has 3,777, and Mysuru 3,166 active cases. Kodagu has the least at 298.
As against a total of over 1.28 lakh recoveries, Bengaluru Urban has 49,392, while Ballari has 6,948.
Experts believe ramped up testing, apart from internal migration, are major factors for the present numbers.
C.N. Manjunath, director of Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and nodal officer for labs and testing in Karnataka’s COVID-19 task force, told The Hindu, “During the lockdown and unlock, there was repeated internal migration from cities such as Bengaluru to other places and back, which resulted in repeated internal circulation owing to which the disease is spreading. There will be always two to four weeks’ time lag, which is the usual scenario in the rest of the country; first in metro cities and then spread to tier-2 and tier-3 cities.”
He said vigorous testing had also helped in early detection and isolation.
