Security beefed up at airports across country after suspicious bag found at Mangaluru airport

Bengaluru, Jul 4: With the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in Bengaluru, the state government has decided to impose a total lockdown in Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) limits.

The lockdown will start from 8 pm today till 5 am on Monday. The sale of essential items will only be allowed during the total lockdown.

"Complete lockdown to be imposed from 8 pm today till 5 am on Monday in Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) limits, as per instructions by Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa in view of COVID-19," BBMP Commissioner Anil Kumar said on Saturday.

"Sale of essential items will be allowed during the lockdown, including meat shops. Police action will be taken against people found roaming outside unnecessarily," he said.

With the number of cases increasing by 994 in the last 24 hours, the total of cases in the city now stands at 7,713. Of these, 6,297 are active cases.

So far, Karnataka has 19,710 cases with 293 deaths. While 8,805 people have recovered from the deadly virus.

At the national level, the total number of cases have now surged to 6, 48,315 out of which 3, 94,227 patients have recorded, while 18,655 have lost their lives.

Wuhan, Feb 6: Chinese multinational conglomerate holding company Tencent has allegedly published "real" data on the novel coronavirus deaths, with briefly listing death toll as 24,589 -- way too higher than over 500 deaths China has officially announced to date.

According to Taiwan News, "Tencent... seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of infections and deaths, which were astronomically higher than official figures".

Tencent, on its webpage titled "Epidemic Situation Tracker," showed confirmed cases of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China as standing at 154,023 - over 10 times the official figure given to the world on February 1.

Data leaked: Tencent lists 25,000 deaths in China, 1.54 lakh infections from coronavirus
It listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808, four times the official figure.

"The number of cured cases was only 269, well below the official number that day of 300. Most ominously, the death toll listed was 24,589, vastly higher than the 300 officially listed that day".

Once people noticed this, Tencent immediately updated the numbers to reflect the government's "official" numbers.

"Netizens noticed that Tencent has on at least three occasions posted extremely high numbers, only to quickly lower them to government-approved statistics," said the report.

Some people speculated a coding problem may be behind the real "internal" data but others believe that someone is actually trying to reveal the real numbers.

Tencent was yet to officially comment on these reports.

"According to multiple sources in Wuhan, many coronavirus patients are unable to receive treatment and die outside of hospitals."

There have been multiple reports of Wuhan officials cremating deceased coronavirus victims before they could be added to the official death toll.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the coronavirus numbers coming out of China are "fishy".

If the numbers from the alleged Tencent leak are accurate, it would put coronavirus' mortality rate at almost 16 per cent. By comparison, SARS' mortality rate was 9.6 per cent, reports CCN.

Caijing, an independent magazine based in Beijing that covers societal, political, and economic issues, has also claimed that the Communist Party of China (CCP) is underreporting the extent of the coronavirus outbreak.

Caijing's article on Coronavirus that detailed how Wuhan officials are not reporting real figures was censored in China.

As of Thursday, the official death toll in China rose to 563, with 28,018 confirmed cases.

Bengaluru, Mar 31: Venkara Raghava, a software engineer from Bengaluru, who was infected with the coronavirus has recovered and is currently "doing perfectly well".

"I am doing perfectly well now. I had travelled to Los Angeles via Heathrow airport and that is when I came in contact with many travellers. I might have picked up the infection there," Raghava told news agency.

It was in Los Angeles when he started getting a 'low-grade fever' which led him to prepone his flight to Bengaluru. "When I landed back in Bengaluru on March 8, I had a fever and I isolated myself. The same day I went to a hospital where my travel history was taken and I tested positive for COVID-19", he said.

The next day, he was admitted to the isolation centre. His entire family was also tested but the results came back negative.

When asked about what does suffering from COVID-19 feel like, he responded that it was a like a regular viral fever and was "nothing to be scared of". "The fever is very grinding, and since my childhood, I never had a fever. I had a fever for almost 15 days consistently 100 degrees (F)," he said.

About his experience at the isolation centre, he said that it was an experience unlike that of a hospital. "At the isolation centre, one has to take care of themselves, unlike a hospital where doctors and nurses take care of the patient. I had to put a wet cloth on myself and you cannot overdose yourself with Calpol or Paracetamol," he said.

For him, "The tough times are now over" and now he has fully recovered but in the process, he ended up losing about five kilograms. "After the fifteenth day when I woke up with no fever, they took a test for the nose and the throat and it came back negative," he recalled, and on March 22, he was set free.

For one week, he has been in self-quarantine at home "being completely watchful" that the symptoms do not reoccur.

The number of total coronavirus cases reached 1,251 on Monday. There are 1117 active cases in the country, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.