Muddu Kanda' awards: Children's day-out at 'Vijaya Karnataka' office

Bengaluru, Jun 17: Amid rising COVID cases in the past two weeks, the Karnataka government is planning to increase testing capacity to 25,000 samples a day, said a minister.

"Due to increase in cases in the last two weeks, the government is trying to scale up testing to 15,000 to 25,000 samples per day," said Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar.

He said people living in crowded places, sanitation workers, street vendors, healthcare workers, police and other frontline staff would be extensively tested.

"It has also been decided to mandatorily test all those who have symptoms of Influenza Like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI)," he said.

Similarly, all people over 50 with ILI symptoms will be tested.

The health department will also randomly test samples in old containment zones to make sure that the infection is not recurring.

Currently, there are 72 Covid testing labs in the southern state, 41 government operated and 31 private labs.

However, for a few days, the number of Covid tests in the state have plummeted.

On Monday, the health department has tested only 5,362 samples across the state.

Likewise, on Tuesday, only 7,936 samples were tested, diverging from earlier weeks when around 10,000 cases were tested on an average.

In all, 4.57 lakh samples have been tested so far, of which 4.39 lakh have tested negative.

Bengaluru, Feb 27: About 60kg of unaccounted gold ornaments worth Rs. 21 crore were unearthed by officers of the Commercial Taxes Department of Karnataka Government.

The ornaments were recovered after the department conducted surprise inspections and raided business premises of wholesale jewellery dealers in Ranganatha Mansion and Sakalajee Market in Chickpet area of Bengaluru on Tuesday.

"The raid was based on information that many traders from other states visit the city and carry gold jewels without any valid documents and supply it to local jewellers without invoices," said Srikar MS Commissioner of Commercial Taxes in a statement.

The officers raided the premises of 23 jewellers and found 60 kg gold ornaments in stock which were not covered by valid documents. A penalty was levied on the undocumented ornaments.

"It is informed that the enforcement wing is keeping a close watch on the interstate movement of gold, silver and all the dealers in the state are hereby advised not to buy any goods without valid purchase invoices, added Srikar MS.

Mangaluru, May 2: The Dakshina Kannada district administration is gearing up to make necessary arragements at the Mangaluru International Airport as the Centre has shown green signal to bring back stranded Indians from the Gulf countries. 

Karnataka is making efforts to bring back 10,823 people stuck abroad. Apart from Mangaluru, Bengaluru Airport also will be used. As many as 6,100 people will be transported in first stage with speical flights. Soon after their arrival, the administraion will send them to compulsary quarantinement in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Kodagu and other neighbouring districts.

Dakshina Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateeel said that the govt has made elaborate arrangements to conduct medical test on arrival at the airport. As per plan, based on medical check-up, they will be categorised as group A/B/C. Later, they will be quarantined for the mandated days, he added.

The following is the break-up Kannadigas stranded abroad: 4,408 people are tourists/visitors, 3,074 students, 2,784 migrants/working professionals and 557 shipping crew.

Countries from where stranded people will be brought back to Karnataka in the first stage include Canada (329), the US (927), the UAE (2,575), Qatar (414), and Saudi Arabia (927).