With 5,012 new cases, Bengaluru Urban reported the highest single day spike so far on Tuesday. With this, the total confirmed cases here touched 2,57,241 of which 55,736 are active cases in the district. Previously, on September 29, this district had reported 4,868 cases, the highest on a single day then.
Munish Moudgil, who heads the State COVID-19 War Room, attributed the increasing cases in Bengaluru Urban to higher testing. The city is conducting an average of about 40,000 tests daily, the highest in the country, he said.
“Mumbai and Chennai have been carrying out about 13,000 tests daily. If Bengaluru did a similar number of tests, our daily cases will be less than 1,500. The idea is not to reduce tests to falsely reduce daily cases,” he said.
Overall, the State reported 9,993 new cases taking the total number of cases to 6,57,705. With 91 new deaths, the toll rose to 9,461. This is apart from 19 non-COVID-19 deaths. Bengaluru Urban reported 34 of the total 91 deaths. With this, the toll in this district rose to 3,135.
As many as 10,228 persons were discharged on Tuesday taking the total number of recoveries to 5,33,074. Active cases continued to remain over lakh with 1,15,151. Of these, 848 patients are being monitored in ICUs.
As many as 92,491 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours including 48,035 rapid antigen tests. With this the total number of tests rose to 54,19,954.
Testing compulsory
Meanwhile, having learnt that certain individuals are refusing to get tested thus hampering the State’s efforts to stop transmission of the virus, the Health Department on Tuesday issued an Order making testing compulsory for all individuals identified by the government.
Invoking section (4) of The Karnataka Epidemic Diseases Ordinance 2020, the Order stated: “All individuals who are identified for COVID-19 test by the government shall get tested so that the spread of the disease can be contained and lives can be saved.”