Police arresting innocents; Rai supporting PFI to disrupt peace: BJP

Bengaluru, May 17: A group of 86 college students, who went to Malaysia for internship and have been stranded due to lockdown, have appealed to Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa to help them return to Karnataka.

The students in the video have also mentioned Union Minister D V Sadananda Gowda and Kolar MP S Muniswamy and stated that States such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu have made arrangements to bring back their natives from South East Asia.

The students added that they are in the Selangor State of Malaysia. They had arrived there on March 13 for a three-month-long internship as part of their college studies. They are living in apartments arranged by their college and money with them is almost spent, their college is extending them support in this regard. They are not in a position to complete the remaining two months of internship due to lock-down in Malaysia.

Bengaluru, May 31: With places of worship expected to reopen on June 8, the Karnataka State Minorities Commission has released guidelines for mosques and dargahs, that include social distancing, temperature testing and compulsory hand washing.

Abdul Azeem, commission chairman said, "Everyone will have to maintain one-metre distance and carry their prayer mats. They will all be scanned and Farz prayers will be held for 10-15 minutes. Friday prayers should be completed within 20 minutes."

Distribution of tabarukh, shaking hands, and overcrowding inside mosques will not be allowed.  The Muzrai department also issued guidelines for temples, like mandatory face masks, sanitisation of sanctum sanctorum and thermal screening.

In a letter, the Hindu Religious Institutions and Charitable Endowment Department mentioned that while temple authorities and devotees should wear masks, priests, helpers and workers are exempt, in the core area of the temple.

"Devotees should be scanned using infrared thermometers at the temple entrance, and must be given hand sanitiser. The temple trust is expected to bear the expenses," it added.

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.