II PU chemistry re-exam on March 29

Bengaluru, Mar 24: Underlining the seriousness of the coronavirus, which is spreading like wildfire in Karnataka, renowned Heart Surgeon and founder of Narayana Hrudayalaya Dr Devi Shetty on Tuesday predicted that Karnataka alone will have more than 80,000 people affected with the dreaded killer disease COVID-19 if people fail to protect themselves.

He urged the people to cooperate with the Government in preventing its further spread and immediately treat those who are affected.

Dr Shetty, urging the people to remain indoors and not to venture out, said those who are affected should not come out and remain in isolation even in their houses and take all precautions advised by doctors.

He said if 80,000 people in the state were affected, more than 20,000 need to be admitted to Hospital for treatment.

"More than 2000 affected need to be kept under ventilation and it requires more infrastructure in the hospitals," he said.

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.

Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 28: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention to remove the blocking of roads including state highway along the border of Karnataka in view of lock down to contain the spread of COVID-19.

In a letter sent to the Prime Minister on Friday evening, the Chief Minister said certain actions by the Karnataka Police have resulted in the blocking the Thalassery-Coorg State Highway-30. This road connects Kerala with Coorg in Karnataka via Veerajapettah. This route is a lifeline for flow of essential commodities to Kerala."

"If this is blocked, vehicles carrying essential commodities will have to travel a much longer route to reach our state. Given the situation of national lock down, this will add much more hardship to people," it said.

"You will naturally agree with me that no action impeding the movement of essential commodities should be initiated at this moment of crisis," he hoped.