Kalaburagi, which had reported India’s first COVID-19 fatality with the death of a 76-year-old man (P-6) on March 10, on Monday reported its sixth casualty, apart from two more positive cases for the disease. With this, Kalaburagi shares the top position with Bengaluru as far as COVID-19 deaths are concerned.
Patient 587, a 56-year-old man who was on April 29 admitted for Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) along with complaints of cough and fever is the latest victim. The information provided by the authorities said that his chest X-ray showed bilateral patchy pneumonitis.
The new cases are P-641 (a 36-year-old woman and a contact of P-604) and P-642 (a 37-year-old man from Chincholi who had a history of travelling to Hyderabad in neighbouring Telangana).
With the new cases, the total number of positive cases in the district rose to 63, including six deaths and 21 persons discharged upon recovery. The district is in the fourth position as far as total number of positive cases is concerned, after Bengaluru (150), Mysuru (88) and Belagavi (71).
The earlier COVID-19 deaths reported from the district were P-6 (a 76-year-old man who died on March 10 and later tested positive for COVID-19 on March 12), P-177 (a 65-year-old man who died on April 8 after getting admitted for SARI), P-205 (a 55-year-old man who died on April 14 after getting admitted for SARI), P-414 (an 80-year-old man who died on April 21 after getting admitted for SARI) and P-422 (a 47-year-old man who died on April 27).
Perplexed by the alarming number of COVID-19 deaths and the rise in positive cases that continued to get reported almost on a daily basis, the district administration is struggling to contain the spread of the infection. It has created 22 containment zones thus far around the residences of COVID-19-infected persons for intense monitoring and preventive measures and 18 such zones are still active. It has thus far covered more than 46,000 houses in the door-to-door survey conducted mainly in the containment zones. Of the 4,722 throat swab samples it had sent to the lab, 4,342 samples tested negative for the disease and results are awaited for 319 samples.
Amid the growing number of COVID-19 positive cases and frequent reporting of deaths caused by it and its decisive battle against the spread of the virus, the district administration has, in tune with the State government, partially lifted COVID-19 lockdown restrictions on Monday. As a result, people’s mobility gradually thickened on the roads that had worn deserted look for over a month. People were found standing in lengthy queues, often not maintaining social distancing, in front of almost all liquor outlets that had just opened their shutters on Monday after the restriction on sale of liquor was lifted, raising concerns of widespread eruption of the pandemic.
