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Karnataka on Saturday reported 12 new cases, the highest in a single day so far, taking the tally in the state to 76.

Late at night, the Mysuru district commissioner said five more people had tested positive in the district. But it was yet to be confirmed by the state health department.

Of the cases, 41 are from Bengaluru, eight from Chikkaballapur, while Uttara Kannada and Dakshina Kannada districts have seven each.

Interestingly, the highest number of patients are those from Dubai or those who had transit travel via Dubai. Out of 76 cases, 17 cases (22%) have travel history to Dubai, the capital of Emirate of Dubai and the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar, who is also in-charge of COVID-19 operations, said that Dubai has been a major concern as far as Karnataka COVID-19 patients are concerned. “Most of the positive cases have come through Dubai suggesting something amiss there,” he said. 

Echoing the same, Dr Prakash Kumar, Joint Director, Communicable Diseases, Department of Health and Family Welfare, said, “The layover in Dubai is around six to seven hours. We are seeing Dubai to be the new epicentre of the virus as far as India is concerned.”

UAE was initially not on the list of countries from where passengers were screened. It was added much later when clusters of patients with travel history to Dubai began popping up all over the country.

Patient-19 has infected the maximum so far.

Out of the 12 cases that tested positive on Saturday, five are contacts of Patient 19. All of them are being treated at a Chikkaballapur hospital. Two of them are from Hindupur, Andhra Pradesh, and three are residents of Gauribidanur taluk in Chikkabalapur district.

P19, a 31-year-old man from Chikkaballapur, had travelled to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and returned to India on March 14. Existing patient clusters suggest that P19 had infected the maximum number of people. Officials did not reveal how many people he originally travelled with to Mecca.

Amid the rise in cases, Jawaid Akhtar, Additional Chief Secretary (Health), maintained that the state had not reached stage 3. But he had no definitive answer as to how the Mysuru patient contracted the virus despite health officials he was in touch with not testing positive.

Health Commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pandey said around 1,000 primary contacts of all positive cases have been classified as high-risk and low-risk. The high-risk patients are in government hospitals while the low-risk ones in quarantine facilities.

Pune/Bengaluru, Mar 25: e-Zest Solutions and Neurosynaptic Communications today announced the ReMeDi SCAN-CORONA platform, an innovative technology solution to help control the Novel COVID-19 pandemic.
As countries worldwide grapple to contain the spread and flatten the curve while treating the ones infected, the need of the hour is to deploy widespread screening and testing procedures to identify and isolate those showing symptoms.
The ReMeDi® SCAN-CORONA platform has a three-pronged approach to controlling the pandemic that makes the task of screening, testing, tracking and reporting extremely easy and manageable at a large scale.
"Mass screening and testing is the need of the hour. With the scarcity of healthcare professionals, there is a need of technology enabled platforms to do this at a large scale with minimal to no human intervention. The ReMeDi SCAN-CORONA brings together remote healthcare expertise and the power of emerging technology such as AI & ML, and promises to reduce the load on the healthcare system, so that timely care reaches the right set of people as fast as possible," said Shree Shingane - Founder and Managing Director, e-Zest Solutions GmbH.
The solution features a Corona-Screen Kit - a portable, lightweight kit that includes basic screening tools that seamlessly connect and feed data into a Patient Health Record (PHR) system without any manual intervention.
It also features a geo-tagging powered Screening app that, by importing and analyzing data from the screening tools as well as travel and medical history. The input from a third-party COVID-19 rapid testing kit further enhances the accuracy of the outcome.
"ReMeDi SCAN-CORONA helps front-line health workers to quickly assess the essential risk factors for a person digitally. It has the unique ability to track the progression of symptoms with time. The tele-consultation facility allows individuals to obtain counselling as well as consult doctors independent of location, to access timely information and guidance. We are proud to present this solution in collaboration with e-Zest," said Sameer Sawarkar CEO - Neurosynaptic.
The beauty of this solution is that while it can bring a big relief for COVID-19 screening efforts, it is equally advantageous to heavily burdened Healthcare Providers in remotely treating the non-corona health requirements as well.
The team acknowledges the valuable contribution in terms of clinical inputs for application development, from Dr Nandakumar, a renowned public health expert.
"e-Zest vision is to leverage Healthcare technologies to impact human life positively. We are happy to be part of this collaboration & look forward to it's contribution to combat the pandemic challenge globally," said Devendra Deshmukh, e-Zest CEO.
This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article.

Bengaluru, Apr 13: Eminent scientist and NITI Aayog member V K Saraswat said on Monday the number of COVID- 19 cases is not going to go beyond what's being reported daily in India as he maintained that the country is in the process of flattening the curve.

The former Scientific Adviser to Defence Minister said the coronavirus positive cases have seen a sharper rise in the last four-five days because of increase in the number of testing.

"It's a good sign; all those asymptomatic cases lying hidden they are also coming out," Saraswat told PTI. "We certainly had a catalytic factor which was basically this (Nizamuddin) Markaz problem which has actually created clusters at different places and that has also been one of the factors for the kind of rise that has taken place."

But he said India is in a much better shape compared to other nations in the battle against COVID-19. "I can only say that the rate is not going to go beyond what has been going on now, may be 700 to 800 cases per day. So, we are in the process of flattening the curve."

The government's decision to declare nation-wide lockdown has paid dividends, Saraswat, a former chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, said.

Noting that India has seen a series of virus attacks in the last 15-20 years including Chikungunya and Dengue, he said the emphasis now should be on more and more R & D to find vaccines in advance.