The confrontation between Deputy Commissioner Rohini Sindhuri and Mysuru City Corporation Commissioner (MCC) Shilpa Nag, which became public on Thursday, comes amid Mysuru district’s unenviable COVID-19 numbers that has become a cause for concern.
Even though a declining trend had begun in the State, Mysuru district’s record of Test Positivity Rate (TPR), daily infections, as well as deaths per million (DPM) have remained worrisome.
Staggering TPR
According to the COVID-19 Positive Cases Analysis of Karnataka State released by the War Room, Bengaluru, on June 1, Mysuru district not only tops the State among the districts in TPR with a staggering 32.83 per cent against State average of 12.79 per cent for the seven-day period between May 25 and May 31, the district stands second in DPM with a figure of 546 against the State average of 422. Mysuru is second only to Bengaluru Rural, which has a DPM of 680.
Even when it comes to Case Fatality Rate (CFR), Mysuru’s 1.14 per cent is a shade higher than the State average of 1.13 per cent.
Slow decline
Significantly, pace of decline in daily infections is also slow. While the rest of the State has witnessed its numbers decline drastically from more than 45,000-50,000 daily infections in the first week of May to 14,000-16,000 in the first week of June, the decrease in numbers in Mysuru district has not been encouraging.
Mysuru district was reporting anywhere between 2,200 and 2,700 daily infections in the first week of May while the figure ranges from 1,100 to 1,700 in the first week of June. Even though a month had passed since the lockdown was imposed in the State, there is concern among the citizens of Mysuru that the district has not managed to substantially reduce the daily infections at the rate at which the numbers have come down in most other parts of the State including Bengaluru.
Death data
Meanwhile, the discrepancies in the number of COVID-19 deaths, particularly in Mysuru city, have been highlighted by not only the media, but also people’s representatives including former Minister S.R. Mahesh of the JD (S), Pratap Simha, BJP MP, and former MLA M.K. Somashekar of the Congress.