As the second wave heightened COVID-19 precautions, including ramping up of testing since last month, the designated labs in Mysuru – both the government as well as private labs - completed 10 lakh swab tests on Friday. These labs had been carrying out tests since the outbreak last year.
On a day when 174 persons tested positive, the number of swab tests, mostly done on RT-PCR method, crossed the 10-lakh mark due to tireless efforts of the lab staff who have been working in three shifts to give faster results.
As on Friday, 10,0,6736 swab tests, including 9,25,558 tests in government labs and 81,178 tests in private labs, had been done. The Viral Research and Diagnostic Lab (VRDL), which functions under the Department of Microbiology, Mysuru Medical College and Research Institute, has done the highest number swab tests till date – nearly five lakh.
After the pandemic situation started to heighten, the health authorities were asked to scale up testing and accordingly more than 4,000 RT-PCR tests were being done with the highest number of tests being done on the student community.
The number of patients testing positive on Friday was 174, the highest since the second wave began, here. Mysuru has been reporting 100-plus cases since over a week putting the officials from the district on their toes for controlling the surge. On Friday, the active cases touched 873, and the number of cases was more than the number of discharges. A total of 108 patients were on Friday discharged.
Sources in the Health Department said more number of persons in the age group of 11 to 40 are getting infected since last month. The contacts of this age group were too testing positive, even as the number of severe cases, including SARI and ILI, have seen a drop. Out of 174 positive cases on Friday, 136 are the contacts of the infected persons while 20 are ILI cases and 9 SARI cases.
Meanwhile, cinemas shall now have 50 per cent seating capacity with alternate seating arrangement in Mysuru, which is among the districts identified by the government for having reported the surge. The cinemas are supposed to implement strict COVID-19 appropriate behaviour enforcing all precautions, according to the new COVID-19 guidelines.
It has to be seen how many cinemas will run with 50 per cent capacity since many did not operate earlier and started running the shows after the curbs were eased allowing 100 per cent seating capacity. Also, the number of people shall not exceed 50 per cent in hotels and restaurants in Mysuru as per the new restrictions issued by the government.
In a span of one month, over one lakh senior citizens have taken the first dose of vaccine. As against the target of 2,79,185 among the elderly citizens, 1,03,156 had been vaccinated as on April 1. As many as 471 people above 60 years of age have got the second dose of the jab.
