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Bengaluru, May 3: The Commissioner of Health and Family Welfare Services in the government of Karnataka KA Dayanand issued an order approving quarantine of asymptomatic COVID-19 infected international passengers on payment basis at star hotels.

The international passengers in the state have been categorised into A, B and C groups depending on their symptoms and co-morbid conditions. Category A passengers are symptomatic and are being sent to isolation hospitals which may be COVID care centres.

Category B and C passengers are asymptomatic and are being sent to institutional facilities like hostels, guest houses, hotels, etc.

"On the basis of demands by category B and C passengers to provide them star hotel accommodation on a self-payment basis, they have been granted the choice of staying in those hotels at their own cost. The BBMP Special Commissioner/Deputy Commissioner can have a meeting with such hotels and finalise the negotiated rate," Commissioner Dayanand said in the order.

"The hotels for category B passengers should have round the clock presence of health personnel while hotels for category C passengers should be visited by health staff once a day," he added.

Bengaluru, June 5: Under the leadership of trouble-shooter D K Shivakumar, the Karnataka Congress is planning a political ‘ghar wapsi’ to bring back leaders who quit the party and also rope in those from other parties.

Shivakumar, the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president, has constituted a 12-member committee headed by former minister Allum Veerabhadrappa to liaise to anchor this effort to bring back people into the party fold. 

The committee comprises of former legislators B A Hasanabba, Ajaykumar Sarnaik, Abhaychandra Jain, Satish Sail, Prafulla Madhukar, former MPs R Dhruvanarayan and BN Chandrappa, MLA V Muniyappa, former mayor Sampath Raj, Mahila Congress leader Kripa Alva and former KPCC general secretary V Y Ghorpade. 

This move comes more than a year after over a dozen Congress MLAs defected and joined the BJP, leading to the collapse of the Congress-JD(S) coalition government. Also, several influential leaders quit the party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections last year.

The constitution of this committee also coincides with disgruntlement brewing within the ruling BJP. 

“Many people who left the party and others have applied (to join Congress). Many have met me also. I felt it wouldn't be right for me to make a decision. So, this committee has been constituted,” Shivakumar said. “They will process all applications and send it to the KPCC.” 

According to Shivakumar, any person wanting to join the Congress should accept the party’s leadership and its ideology. “Importantly, they should be first accepted by the cadre. If there's no acceptance from the cadre, then what's the point?” he said.

Bengaluru, May 28: The Karnataka government has done away with previously mandatory COVID-19 testing for asymptomatic international travellers. 

The development comes a day after the government issued a circular, which allowed placing of international travellers into home quarantine if they had completed seven days of institutional quarantine.

A circular signed by Jawaid Akhtar, Additional Chief Secretary to the State Government, dated May 27, says that any “person who has completed seven days of institutional quarantine and is asymptomatic can be permitted for home quarantine with a COVID-19 test (RT-PCR), subject to undergoing a medical check-up.”

This check-up equates to thermal screening (with a required temperature of under 37.5C or 99.5F and pulse oximetry of under 94%). 

The circular added that all elderly people, over the age of 60, and those with comorbidities (such as Diabetes mellitus, hypertension, asthma, heart ailment, renal disease...etc) are “required to be clinically evaluated diligently prior to shifting them for quarantine.”

On Wednesday, Pankaj Pandey, Commissioner, the Department of Health and Family Welfare said that these new guidelines were based on recommendations from the COVID Task Force. A member of the COVID Task Force said that new strategies had been formulated based on the latest findings on how the SARS-Cov-2 virus affects people.