One more person with COVID-19 died in Andhra Pradesh and 48 fresh cases were reported on Saturday, after 9,628 samples were tested.
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Kerala reported 11 positive cases, all of them imported. Seven were expatriates who came home recently and the rest, Non-Resident Keralites from Chennai and Maharashtra.
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Karnataka announced it would have hotels inspected after several complaints were raised over poor quality of food and unhygienic accommodation provided in private quarantine in Bengaluru.
In Kerala, Thrissur accounted for four cases, Kozhikode three, and Malappuram and Palakkad two cases each.
Four COVID-19 patients who tested negative were declared as having recovered.
Of the 587 cases reported by Kerala so far, only 87 remained in treatment in various hospitals, while 497 had recovered.
So far, 55,045 people had arrived in the State from abroad and other parts of the country, by air, road, rail, and through seaports.
The State had 56,981 people in the surveillance category, of whom, 56,362 were in home quarantine while 619 were isolated in hospitals.
Kerala had tested samples from 43,669 persons, of which 41,814 returned a negative result. As part of the ongoing sentinel surveillance, the State had tested another 4,764 samples from priority groups in the population on a random basis, of which 4,644 samples were negative, an official release said.
Action against hotels
Announcing Karnataka’s intention to have hotels inspected over complaints on private quarantine facilities, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Suresh Kumar said: “In such cases, BBMP should cancel the licence of the hotel. I will speak to the BBMP commissioner and ask him to initiate immediate action.”
A day after recording the biggest spike in the number of positive cases on a single day and crossing the 1,000 mark, Karnataka on Saturday reported 36 new cases, taking the total to 1,092.
With 14 new cases, Bengaluru reported the majority. All the 14 were contacts of a housekeeping staffer of a hotel in Shivajinagar. The individual had become a super-spreader, having infected 29 persons in one week, said Mr. Suresh Kumar.
One more passenger in Udupi, who had returned from Dubai, and 11 inter-State travellers who returned from Mumbai, Maharashtra and Ahmedabad tested positive. Of the new cases, eight were reported from Kalaburgi, four from Hassan, three from Shivamogga, and one each from Udupi, Mandya, Dharwad, Davangere, Ballari, Bagalkote and Vijayapura.
All four and three cases in Hassan and Shivamogga respectively, one each from Kalaburgi, Dharwad and Bagalkote had a travel history to Mumbai, and the lone case in Ballari had travelled to Ahmedabad.
The State Government would write to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to initiate action against Lal Path Labs in Bengaluru for discrepancy in COVID-19 testing of a pregnant woman.
While the report from the private lab said the woman had tested positive, a repeat test in a government lab showed she was negative. The private lab was an ICMR-approved collection centre in Bengaluru.
When pointed out that following similar discrepancies in Delhi, the Delhi Government had ordered a probe, the Minister said the Karnataka Government would write to ICMR.
Shadow of market
Chennai’s Koyambedu wholesale market contacts continued to push the figures in Andhra Pradesh, as 31 of 48 cases were linked to the hotspot. Also, 101 patients recovered in the State.
Among new cases linked to the market, Kurnool and Nellore districts reported nine each. Eight fresh cases in Chittoor, two of four fresh cases in Visakhapatnam, cases in Kadapa and West Godavari were similarly connected. Krishna district reported seven fresh cases. The tally had risen to 2,355 and the toll mounted to 49 with the death of a patient in Kurnool. Of total cases, 150 were migrant workers who had returned in the recent past.
Most of the recovered patients were from Kurnool (47) and Anantapur (37) districts. The rest were from Krishna (5), East Godavari (3), Prakasam (3), West Godavari (3), Kadapa (2) and Visakhapatnam (1). So far 1,353 patients recovered and the number was higher than active cases at 953. Excluding the migrant workers’ cases, the number of active cases were 803.
District tallies (minus migrants) were: Kurnool (608), Guntur (413), Krishna (367), Chittoor (173), Nellore (149).
477 new casesin T.N.
On a day when Tamil Nadu reported 477 new cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), 939 persons were discharged after recovery from hospitals across the State. This was the highest number of patients to be discharged on a single day in TN, according to Health Minister C. Vijayabaskar.
Out of the 477 new COVID-19 cases, 93 persons had returned from abroad and from other States. This took the total tally of positive cases in the State to 10,585. Chennai’s total number of positive cases crossed the 6,000-mark with 332 fresh cases. Three more persons died in the city, taking the total number of deaths in TN to 74. The number of samples tested during the day stood at 10,535.
(With inputs from Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram Bureaus)
