Covid-19 in Karnataka: Active cases below 15,000, first time since March

BENGALURU: Active Covid-19 cases in Karnataka have dipped below 15,000 for the first time since March 23, but the state continues to be among the regions with a high number of patients under treatment.
Kerala leads the table with more than 1.6 lakh such patients, followed by Maharashtra (39,000). Maharashtra, in fact, is the only other state with over 25,000 active infections.Mizoram, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are the other worst-affected states with an ongoing caseload of above 10,000 each. West Bengal and Odisha have a tally of 5,000 each.

Six other states/UTs — Telangana, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur and Meghalaya — have an active caseload of above 1,000 but lower than 5,000.
During the second wave of the pandemic, Karnataka breached the 6-lakh mark in active cases, which was the highest in the country. It faced severe criticism for being under-prepared to handle the situation as hundreds of people struggled to find hospital beds and oxygen in the April-May period.
The number of active cases began to decrease slowly thereafter — as was expected given that Covid-19 has on average been claiming only around 2 per cent of those infected across the globe — and went below the 25,000-mark in the first week of July.
At present, the number is under 13,500. On September 24, the figure was 13,306. And so far as preparations for the next possible wave go, health minister K Sudhakar said on Friday that the government was continuously working on enhancing medical infrastructure in the state.
Pointing out that before Covid-19, there were only 725 ICU beds at government facilities — 413 in medical colleges and 312 in hospitals — he said that the same was increased to 1,961 during the second wave. And now, there are 3,877 such beds.
“Before the pandemic, the state had a total of 4,847 oxygenated beds. Of these, 4,260 were in government medical colleges and 587 in government hospitals. The capacity was increased to 5,387 by the end of the first wave and to 25,184 by the second wave. As of August 2021, the number of oxygenated beds stood at 28,447,” Sudhakar added.
A district-wise analysis shows that Bengaluru Urban accounts for nearly 56 per cent of the active Covid-19 cases in the state, with 7,443 patients under treatment. Dakshina Kannada (1,066), Udupi (647), Mysuru (615) and Hassan (481) are next on the list.
Chikkamagaluru (426), Tumakuru (413) and Kodagu (321) are the other districts with more than 200 active cases.