Even as the Dasara fete passed off successfully, the number of active cases in Mysuru has dropped by over 50 per cent in a span of about 10 days.
Also, the cumulative recoveries as on Wednesday were nearing the 45,000-mark, thanks to remarkable improvement in the discharges of patients since early this month.
As on Wednesday, Mysuru has 2,073 active cases which is over 50 per cent less when compared to the number of active cases about 10 days ago. There were nearly 6,000 active cases until October 20.
When Mysuru was gearing up for the festivities early this month, there were a lot of apprehensions on whether the celebrations, though on a low-key, would spike the cases with tourists thronging the city. The anxiety also led to the visit of COVID-19 Technical Advisory Committee from Bengaluru and advisories to the Mysuru district administration on dealing with the pandemic through the celebrations.
Since the start of the festivities and the conclusion, the cases did not spike like they did last month, much to the relief of the authorities even though most events had been cancelled as a precautionary measure besides restricting public entry to the venues.
Prior to the celebrations, Minister for Health and Medical Education K. Sudhakar visited Mysuru twice to assess the COVID-19 situation and issue directions for keeping the pandemic under control. Accordingly, some steps were initiated, including the ramping up of tests, doorstep testing, and active contact tracing besides carrying out a death audit of all the fatalities since the outbreak to ascertain the reasons for the spurt in deaths here.
The active cases on day one of Dasara on October 17 stood at 7,246. On that day, 501 positive cases had been reported along with 10 deaths.
A day later, Mysuru reported one death with 404 new infections. The cases, however, dropped with 151 new infections on day three with four new deaths. But, there were 451 new cases on day four besides two new deaths. On day four, October 20, the active cases were 5,976. In 10 days from thereon, the active cases have dropped by over 50 per cent with the sliding of the positivity rate (PR) and the case fatality rate (CFR)
After the authorities managed to get a grip on the pandemic, Deputy Commissioner Rohini Sindhuri, a week ago, said that all parameters were showing improvement with the case fatality rate down from 2.1 per cent to 1.1 per cent since early this month with the rise in testing from 2,000 to nearly 4,000 a day.
She, however, cautioned against being inattentive to the precautions over the fall in new infections, saying that Mysuru was still not COVID-19 free and advised the people to continue taking all precautions until the pandemic was brought under full control.
The data released by the COVID-19 War Room recently showed the number of persons testing positive was also on the decline with the positivity rate falling to 7.8 per cent from 9.0 per cent in a span of two weeks.
