For the first time since many weeks, COVID-19 cases in Mysuru have fallen to the two-digit mark, giving a long awaited breather to the district administration and the frontline workers.
After a brief phase of Mysuru becoming “COVID-19-free” with zero cases a few months ago, the cases peaked, turning Mysuru a COVID-19 hotspot with the district having second highest cases after Bengaluru.
Mysuru became the focus of attention since the fatalities too were highest in the State after Bengaluru. At one point of time, the highest 15 deaths were reported on a single day in Mysuru, putting the administration and the healthcare workers on their toes, to control the case fatality rate and also the positivity rate.
As many as 79 cases were reported on Saturday, lowest since many weeks. Also, the recoveries were more than the active cases as 199 persons were discharged on Saturday, bringing the number of recoveries to 46,643. Mysuru has reported 48,620 cumulative positive cases and two deaths were reported on Saturday, taking the death toll to 972 since the outbreak.
Also, thanks to rapid recoveries and steady drop in cases, the number of active cases has come down to 1,005 on Saturday. The number of patients in home isolation has fallen below 500.
Meanwhile, the liquid handling system for early RT-PCR results was launched at the VRDL in K.R. Hospital here on Saturday. Deputy Commissioner Rohini Sindhuri inaugurated the newly-introduced testing system at the Viral Research and Diagnostic Laboratory at the Microbiology Department of Mysore Medical College and Research Institute. The equipment was supplied to MMCRI on a special request to the government over rapid rise in cases in Mysuru until last month. With the launch of the new testing system, results on the swab samples can be found in less than 24 hours. The MMCR hopes to ramp up testing with the launch of the advanced testing device and take daily PCR tests from 2,500 to 4,000 tests a day.
