After completing 2-month Yoga course, CISF jawan kills 4 colleagues

Bengaluru, Mar 24: The usually busy and bustling city of Bengaluru wore a deserted look on Tuesday as Karnataka went into total lockdown, with the exception being the emergency services, to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa on Monday had announced a complete lockdown in the state till April 1.
"In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, the entire state will be locked down from 12 am of March 23 to April 1. People are requested to strictly follow it to contain the coronavirus spread," Yediyurappa said.
Earlier, the Karnataka government had ordered the suspending of all public and private transport services.
According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the total number of positive cases of COVID-19 in India have risen to 491.

Mangaluru, May 7: The Dakshina Kannada District Muslim Okkoota has strongly condemned permit for opening of textile and footwear shops across the district at a time when the number of Covid-19 positive cases are on the rise.

In a press note here on Thursday, former Mayor and Okoota President Ashraf alleged that the permission to open the shops at a time when Eid-ul-Fitr was nearing would lead to rush in the shops in turn bringing in fear of spread of Covid-19. 

He expressed his resentment over the fact that the administration has neglected the appeal made by the Okkoota as well as the Qazi of Udupi against permitting textile shops during the lockdown period.

He warned that the administration, district in-charge Minister, MLA and MP themselves will be responsible in case of increased infection cases due to this decision.

The district in-charge minister Kota Srinivas Poojary yesterday had announced that textile shops in the district can be opened from May 7.

The current physical distancing guidelines provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may not be adequate to curb the coronavirus spread, according to a research which says the gas cloud from a cough or sneeze may help virus particles travel up to 8 metres. The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, noted that the the current guidelines issued by the WHO and CDC are based on outdated models from the 1930s of how gas clouds from a cough, sneeze, or exhalation spread.

Study author, MIT associate professor Lydia Bourouiba, warned that droplets of all sizes can travel 23 to 27 feet, or 7-8 metres, carrying the pathogen.

According to Bourouiba, the current guidelines are based on "arbitrary" assumptions of droplet size, "overly simplified", and "may limit the effectiveness of the proposed interventions" against the deadly pandemic.

 She explained that the old guidelines assume droplets to be one of two categories, small or large, taking short-range semi-ballistic trajectories when a person exhales, coughs, or sneezes.

However based on more recent discoveries, the MIT scientist said, sneezes and coughs are made of a puff cloud that carries ambient air, transporting within it clusters of droplets of a wide range of sizes.

Bourouiba warned that this puff cloud, with ambient air entrapped in it, can offer the droplets moisture and warmth that can prevent it from evaporation in the outer environment.

"The locally moist and warm atmosphere within the turbulent gas cloud allows the contained droplets to evade evaporation for much longer than occurs with isolated droplets," she said.

"Under these conditions, the lifetime of a droplet could be considerably extended by a factor of up to 1000, from a fraction of a second to minutes," the researcher explained in the study.

The MIT scientist, who has researched the dynamics of coughs and sneezes for years, added that these droplets settle along the trajectory of a cough or sneeze contaminating surfaces, with their residues staying suspended in the air for hours.

"Even when maximum containment policies were enforced, the rapid international spread of COVID-19 suggests that using arbitrary droplet size cutoffs may not accurately reflect what actually occurs with respiratory emissions, possibly contributing to the ineffectiveness of some procedures used to limit the spread of respiratory disease," Bourouiba wrote in the study