The expert committees, including the Central team, that visited Karnataka have advised state government to ramp up COVID-19 testing and pursue aggressive contact tracing. The state has been battling a sudden surge in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths.
On Wednesday, the state reported 2,062 new cases, taking the total number of cases to 28,877 (16,527 active cases) and 470 deaths.
"The state has reached a stage that we were supposed to reach only by the end of July," medical education minister and state COVID-19 spokesperson Dr K. Sudhakar said.
The state government hopes to scale up daily testing from the current 18,000 tests to 30,000 in the next 10 days.
Dr C.N. Manjunath, a cardiologist who is part of the state COVID-19 task force, said, “Extensive testing helps identify the positive cases and encourages early initiation of treatment which helps reduce deaths. The government is procuring around one lakh rapid antigen test kits by Friday. This test gives out the result in 5-10 minutes. If the patients test positive, they need to be sent for COVID care. If they test negative with no symptoms, they can be treated for other ailments. In case the patient tests negative, but has symptoms, an RT-PCR test is mandatory to confirm the result. This test can be done at the fever clinics, private hospitals, mobile labs and at the patient's door step too."
With Bengaluru witnessing several instances of patients being turned away by private hospitals suspecting that they may have contracted COVID, the government has urged all hospitals to acquire the rapid testing strips.
"Often, even non-COVID patients are refused treatment over suspicion of having the disease. But unlike the RT-PCR test which currently takes 1-3 days for the result (due to backlog), rapid antigen gives result in 10 minutes. Every hospital should conduct rapid test so that they can safely admit the patient if he or she tests negative. The positive cases can be referred to the COVID care facility," explained Manjunath.
Expressing concern over the increase in non-COVID deaths, Manjunath advised people to overcome fear, saying, "The delay in seeking medical help is responsible for the spike in deaths. But the pandemic is also a test of our will power and one should not fear the worst. You must know that 85-90 per cent of COVID-19 patients need no treatment, only eight per cent per cent need oxygen, and hardly two per cent of patients require the ventilator."
Community vaccine
The doctor appealed to the people to strictly follow what he called as the "community vaccine".
"The vaccine for COVID-19 is at least 6-9 months away. But we have three community vaccines—social distancing of three to six feet, which is known to reduce the risk of transmission to one per cent, and wearing the mask, which gives 95 per cent safety even to doctors treating a COVID-19 patient; thermal scanning or fever screening. This flu season, everyone suffering from fever, cough, body pain, headache, diarrhea or fatigue must undergo COVID testing. This helps in early detection and isolation of the patient," said Manjunath, adding that testing labs had increased from seven in April to 82 in July.
The task force has planned a "robot rounds" at the 10,000-bed COVID Care Centre coming up at the Bangalore International Exhibition Centre on Tumkur Road to impart high quality care by specialist doctors.
The task force has warned against repeated internal migration in the state as it is contributing to the disease burden. The migration from the city to the villages is spreading the infection in the unaffected areas too, the experts pointed out.
