Bengalureans stay cold to quarantine selfies

BENGALURU: Among the many initiatives of the Karnataka government to tackle the spread of Covid-19 was its request to people in home quarantine to send selfies and report their health status and location.
However, people in most districts have remained cold to it, with just about 12% sending selfies, which has left authorities struggling with increased home visits.

While the total number of selfies received so far is unavailable, the war room, for the first time, has made public data on number of people in active home quarantine and number of selfies sent to the government.
As of Sunday, there were 1.1 lakh people in active quarantine, and only 13,596 (12.3%) had sent selfies. These numbers change every day.
“The number of people in quarantine is based on data from Seva Sindhu. Even as we’ve been reiterating that prevention is the best way to beat Covid, people are not co-operating with us. We urge them to be prompt in sending their reports,” said war room head Munish Moudgil.
Of 1.1 lakh people in quarantine, 57,090 are in Bengaluru, of whom 993 (1.7%) had sent selfies, the least in terms of percentage.
Meanwhile, 970 people in Bidar, which has 2,933 people in active quarantine, had sent selfies. Tumakuru with 1,084 people in quarantine saw 38% sending selfies, while Dakshina Kannada and Kalaburagi reported 1,201 and 1,033 selfies; it has 5,253 and 2,657 people in quarantine.
The poor response has forced authorities to do physical verification. As on Sunday, government staff visited 28,280 people (26%) in active quarantine.
“It’s logistically impossible given the large number of people to visit and limited staff with us. There’s also a concern of health workers visiting such homes contracting the infection,” Moudgil added.