Even as Karnataka is witnessing a spike in the number of COVID-19 cases, the initial zeal the government and bureaucracy displayed in disseminating information related to the pandemic seems to have waned.

While the State Health Department has stopped issuing regular daily midday bulletin for the last two weeks, there has been no daily media briefing since June 1.

Two months after taking up the responsibility of briefing the media daily on the spread of COVID-19 and other related developments, Primary and Secondary Education Minister S. Suresh Kumar has excused himself from the task as he is “busy with preparations for conducting SSLC exams”.

With this, for now, no Minister is in charge of disseminating information related to COVID-19. Mr. Suresh Kumar said he would request Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa to assign the responsibility to someone else. On April 3, Mr. Yediyurappa had entrusted the responsibility of holding the daily pandemic briefings to Mr. Suresh Kumar. This was mainly due to lack of coordination between Health Minister B. Sriramulu and Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar over COVID-19 issues.

Although both of them were involved in surveillance and formulation of testing and treatment strategies, they made contradictory statements over the total number of cases and deaths.

“Following this, the Chief Minister had to intervene by making Mr. Sudhakar responsible for COVID-19 affairs in Bengaluru, while Mr. Sriramulu was asked to take care of the rest of Karnataka,” sources said. The Chief Minister had also asked Ministers to refrain from appearing on news channels for panel discussions on COVID-19.

“I have been personally monitoring preparations for the conduct of SSLC examinations during this pandemic. I visited 19 districts and will be covering the remaining 11 in the coming days. Hence, I requested Mr. Yediyurappa to excuse me from the responsibility of briefing the media on COVID-19 and he obliged,” Mr. Suresh Kumar told The Hindu.

When contacted, Mr. Sudhakar said that he was not aware that media briefings were not happening and that he would speak to the officials on this issue.