Mysuru and Kodagu reported one COVID-19 case each on Monday. Mysuru had recently become “coronavirus-free” after all 90 patients recovered and were discharged from hospital with no virus-related deaths since the outbreak. The active cases had dropped to zero on Friday.

This is the first positive case in Mysuru, which is in the ‘red zone’, after a gap of nearly 18 days.

Mysuru, which is awaiting reclassification into a “green zone” and had become a model for combating pandemic, had come under praise since all patients had been successfully treated for the contagion. The people behind the combat had been felicitated on Saturday for their persistent efforts.

Exactly after a gap of two months, Kodagu has reported a fresh case of infection. The first COVID-19 case was reported on March 19 and the patient had been discharged long ago. Kodagu was hailed, even by the Union Health Ministry, since no new infection was reported after the first case.

The Mysuru patient, a 46-year-old man, has a travel history to Maharashtra and had returned from Mumbai recently. The patient number 1225 was kept in the institutional quarantine here. Kodagu’s patient number 1224, a 45-year-old man, is also a Mumbai returnee. The two patients had been shifted to the COVID-19 hospitals in Mysuru and Madikeri respectively.

As many as 685 inter-State travellers had returned to Mysuru and all of them had been placed in institutional quarantine. The samples of the returnees are being drawn from the 12th day of their quarantine as the health authorities here feel the samples collected from that day onwards yield accurate results. The testing on the samples had started from Sunday.

About 7,677 people, including 409 inter-State travellers, returned to Kodagu from various districts and States. The authorities were awaiting the results of at least 245 samples drawn from the returnees. About 30 suspected cases are under observation.