Although the State’s COVID-19 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) had said that North Karnataka districts will be the worst hit by the third wave as these districts have been lagging behind in vaccination from the beginning, the rate of infection continues to be low in these districts.
While the seven-day average TPR in Bengaluru Urban remains the highest at 11.63% as of January 11, Mandya, Mysuru, Tumakuru, Bengaluru Rural and Kolar have a TPR hovering around 5%.
North Karnataka districts — Haveri, Bagalkote, Yadgir and Koppal — have the lowest seven-day average TPR of less than 1%. Experts, who said this is a good indicator, asserted the need for these districts to sustain the low TPR by increasing testing.
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Karnataka had been consistently maintaining TPR of less than 1% for the last four months. The seven-day average TPR was on a steady decline since August 15 when it touched 1.01%. It reduced to 0.63% in a month by September 15 and 0.26% on November 15. Although TPR slightly increased to 0.42% by November 30, mainly due to clusters reported across the State, TPR again declined to 0.36% on December 9 and remained less than 0.5% till December 30.
In terms of daily TPR, 16 districts — including Mandya and Bengaluru Urban that have the highest TPR — have recorded a TPR of above 10% as of Wednesday. North Karnataka districts — Yadgir, Haveri, Gadag and Koppal — have recorded the lowest daily TPR at 0.88%, 1.09%, 3.52% and 3.55% respectively.
TPR, which is a vital marker in assessing the spread of an outbreak, is the percentage of people who are found to be infected by the virus from those who are being tested. According to epidemiologists, a high positivity rate indicates that testing is relatively limited to people with high suspicion of COVID-19 and may miss new chains of transmission in the community.
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Worried over the high transmissibility of Omicron, the TAC had on December 30 advised the Government to impose stricter curbs if the weekly TPR goes above 2% as an early measure of mitigation.
While recommending weekend and night curfews if the WTPR is between 1% and less than 2%, the TAC has said lockdown should be considered if the WTPR goes above 3%. If it’s between 2% and 3%, educational institutions will have to switch to remote learning, and offices to work from home. The committee had earlier fixed the threshold for lockdown as 5%. Although the government had imposed night curfew, weekend curfew and 50% capacity restrictions for malls, hotels, cinema halls and all other activities, it has not taken any decision on total lockdown.
TAC chairman M.K. Sudarshan, who attributed the low rate of infection in North Karnataka districts to low rate of testing, said the infection is yet to spread from Bengaluru to other districts. “People are not able to travel from Bengaluru to their native places due to weekend curfew and other restrictions,” he said.
Stating that the TAC has recommended an increase in daily tests to two lakh, Dr. Sudarshan said that 1.3 lakh tests should be done in Bengaluru and the remaining in the rest of Karnataka. ”Following this, the Chief Minister has directed officials to increase testing,” he said.
C.N. Manjunath, nodal officer for labs and testing in the State’s COVID-19 task force, said rate of infection is high in Bengaluru and surrounding districts mainly because movement is high here. “What we noticed during the last two waves is that there is always a lag period of 3-4 weeks between Bengaluru and other districts,” he said.