Five more persons have tested positive from Mysuru district in Karnataka late on Saturday evening. This is in addition to the 76 cases confirmed earlier by the latest bulletin released by the Karnataka Health and Family Welfare Department on Saturday evening.
Mysuru Deputy Commissioner Abhiram G Sekhar confirmed that all the five new cases are employees of Jubilant, a pharmaceutical company which has a unit in Nanjangud Town, and are contacts of P53 in the state.
Four of them are residents of Chamundi Pura Extension, Ramaswamy Layout, Govind Raj Layout in Nanjangud Town, the other person is a resident of Yaraganahalli New Extension in Mysuru city.
This has led to district authorities treat the development as a cluster case and vehicles moving in and out of the town are being monitored closely.
It may be recalled that on Thursday, the state government had declared that P53 (third case from Mysuru) — a 35-year-old man in the district with no relevant foreign travel or contact history, was found to be positive for coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
Health department officials also said that he was in contact with several healthcare professionals and he was working in the Quality Assurance department of the pharma company.
The Karnataka State Health Department bulletin had then said that a detailed investigation is under process and seven of his primary contacts have been already traced.
The other two cases of Mysuru are both returnees from Dubai.
As earlier stated, these five cases were confirmed after the Health Department had earlier confirmed 12 new positive cases of coronavirus in Karnataka, taking the total number of the affected in the state to 76, as of Saturday.
According to the department, the 12 new cases detected since last evening to this afternoon, eleven are contacts of patients who have already tested positive and are undergoing treatment for COVID-19.
In total among the 82 positive cases in Karnataka as of Sunday morning, 41 has been reported from Bengaluru, eight from Chikkaballapura, seven from Dakshina Kannada and Uttara Kannada, three each from Kalaburgai and Davangere, and one each from Kodagu, Dharwad, Udupi and Tumakuru. Eight cases have been detected from Mysuru.
All the five discharged patients are from Bengaluru; while one death each was reported in Kalaburagi, Bengaluru and Tumakuru.
(PTI inputs)