As of Sunday evening, the Karnataka government confirmed that another six patients in the state have contracted the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) disease since afternoon. This means 17 new cases were confirmed in the state since Saturday evening. With this, the total number of cases in the state is 232 which includes six deaths and 54 recoveries.
All the six new patients have no recent travel history or known contact with an existing COVID-19 patient, according to the health bulletin. However, the government has denied that the state has reached the community transmission stage for the disease.
Among the patients on Sunday is a two-year-old baby boy from Kalaburagi who has been categorised as a patient suffering from Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI). The other five are all from Vijayapura – a 13-year-old boy, a 12-year-old girl, a 10-year-old boy and a man and woman who are 49-years-old and 20-years-old respectively.
Vijayapura Deputy Commissioner YS Patil said contact tracing procedure is ongoing at the moment.
Incidentally, till Saturday, Vijayapura had not reported any case of COVID-19. Earlier on Sunday, a 60-year-old woman from the northern district was the first to test positive and even she has no relevant travel history or any contact with an already infected patient.
It was earlier reported that another 76-year-old woman from Bengaluru among those who tested positive on Sunday also has no relevant contact or travel history. She was also categorised as a SARI patient.
With the number of such cases rising with no traced source of the disease, state health officials still maintain that the state had not reached the third or community transmission stage.
Incidentally, in Mysuru, a cluster which has been traced back to an employee of a pharmaceutical company in Nanjangud, with no known travel or contact history has seen more than 32 persons getting infected.
With this the state has a total number of 173 active cases spread across 19 districts. Bengaluru Urban district remains the most affected with 52 cases followed by Mysuru with 39 cases. Belagavi and Bagalkote have 14 and 11 cases respectively.