Karnataka saw a massive spike with 41,457 new COVID-19cases reported on Tuesday. As many as 25,595 cases were from Bengaluru Urban. This was in sharp contrast to the numbers from the previous day, when the overall number of new cases dipped below 30,000 to 27,156. Districts such as Bengaluru Rural, Dakshina Kannada, Hassan, Mysuru, and Tumakuru too reported over 1,000 new cases.
The positivity rate, too, saw a huge jump as it stood at 22.3%, according to the Health and Family Welfare Department’s bulletin. It was 12.45% on Monday.
After a meeting attended by the Chief Minister and 18 Deputy Commissioners, among others, Health Minister K. Sudhakar said on Tuesday that there could be as many as 1.2 lakh cases a day as per the report submitted by theTechnical Advisory Committee (TAC).
“In a good case scenario, the report says it could stop at 80,000 cases. The number of new cases per day has already crossed 40,000. The speed at which the infection is spreading in the third wave is four to five times more than that of the second wave. The number of cases could go down by the second or third week of February,” he said.
Adding that Karnataka is conducting the highest number of tests in the country, he also acknowledged that cases are rising in rural areas. Twenty new deaths were recorded across Karnataka, and the case fatality rate stood at 0.04%. There are currently over 2.5 lakh active cases in the State, while the number of tests conducted was 1.85 lakh.
No new Omicron variant cases were reported. On Monday, Bengaluru recorded 287 new Omicron cases, taking the overall tally in the State to 766.
