BENGALURU: While contact tracing is playing an important part in controlling the spread of Covid-19, it has been very poor in many of the districts over the last seven days, according to the state war room data. Many officials feel this could be one of the reasons for the spurt in cases in Karnataka.
The State Government had recently announced that for every one Covid-positive cases, 20 contacts should be identified and traced. However, this isn’t being followed. Districts like Haveri, Koppal, Raichur, Vijayapura, Bengaluru Urban have recorded no contacts of patients. Haveri district has recorded two Covid-positive patients in the last seven days, but none of the primary contacts or secondary contacts were traced.
‘Need to monitor trends in tests’
Similarly, in Koppal district, nine positive cases were detected, but no contacts were traced. In Bengaluru Urban, 3,524 positive cases were detected with 127 primary and 62 secondary contacts traced. The total number of contacts traced in all the districts is only 4.5 per patient. It was also seen that the state has not been following home isolation visits in many districts. Districts like Chikkamagaluru, Chitradurga, Belagavi, Bangalore Rural, Tumakuru, Hassan, Chikkaballapur, Dakshina Kannada, Shivamogga have also seen less than 10 contacts per patient being traced.
Mounish Moudgil, in charge of state war room, admitted, “Contact tracing has not been happening like earlier. The BBMP states that they have been carrying out contact tracing, but they have not been updating the information on the contact tracing portal and hence the figures are low.”Dr Giridhar Babu, member of the state expert committee on Covid-19, pointed out that it is very important to carry out contact tracing. “ It needs to be strengthened by involving other departments other than the Health Department as they are busy with vaccination and testing. The delay in coordination will lead to exponential increase in cases. We need to closely monitor trends in tests, positivity and reproductive number.”
Admitting to a lag in contact tracing, Dr Thrilok Chandra, Commissioner of Health and Family Welfare, said, “Yes, it has taken a step back and we are working on increasing it. Every day, I have been conducting meetings with district officers to work on increasing contact tracing. The tracing will be hastened in the coming days.” Belagavi District Health Officer Dr Shashikant Munyal said , “The positivity rate is low due to fewer cases. Hence, the number of contacts per patient are also low. Follow up of contacts is going on as per procedure.”