BENGALURU: Between August 20 and September 2, 4,202 health and other field workers, associated with the state government, have contracted Covid-19. A majority of 1,879 are from Bengaluru, as per a Covid district report put out by the war room.Bengaluru is followed by Davanagere with 305 such workers testing positive, Chikkaballapur with 268, Raichur 184 and Mysuru 161.Dr C Nagaraj, Director, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases, said that health workers are trained to wear and remove PPE kits and any slip in this is a remote possibility.

“When patients who are severe cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Infection come in at the last minute, leading to their death at times, their Covid status is not known to the hospital staff. The patient’s attender or family have to be briefed by health workers. It is possible that the virus may have spread to health workers during such times. We have observed such cases in our hospital,” he said.

The health staff may have also contracted the virus from public places, their residence or while taking the public transport, he said.SARI accounts for 2.8 per cent, or 3,163 patients, of all cases. Those with Influenza Like Illness are 24,131 during these three weeks, the report found.It revealed that 59.6 per cent of the total 1,11,855 patients in all 30 districts are symptomatic, while 40.4 percent are asymptomatic. The top five districts with symptomatic cases are Bengaluru, Kolar, Kodagu, Ramanagara and Haveri.Of the total cases, 60.4 per cent are male and 39.5 per cent female. The top four districts with the best contact tracing are Yadgir, Hassan, Chikkaballapur and Ballari.