Bengaluru: The daily new coronavirus cases crossed the 50,000 mark in Karnataka as the state is hit by the third Covid wave, the state health department data shows. The new Covid cases rose by 50,210 in the past 24 hours. Of the total new coronavirus cases, over half - 26,299 - have been reported in Bengaluru only, Karnataka chief minister said.
He said the state's Covid positivity rate stands at 22.77 per cent, while active Covid patients' tally rose to 3,57,796. The daily new cases on Sunday saw a significant rise as compared to Saturday when Karnataka reported 48,049 new Covid cases. The case positivity rate stood at 19.23 per cent on Saturday. A total of 165 new cases of Omicron were also confirmed in Bengaluru, taking the overall tally in the state to 931, he said.
45,000 new cases in Kerala
Kerala continued to record a daily tally of over 45,000 cases for the second day in a row taking the total number of affected people in the state to 56,20,151. In a bulletin the health department said 45,449 new positive cases were detected. On Saturday, the state had recorded 45,136 new cases while on Thursday, Kerala had registered 46,387 cases, the highest single-day spike since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020.
"Currently, only 3.5 per cent of the active Covid patients are admitted to hospitals," the department said. Kerala registered 77 fatalities, taking the deaths to 51,816. Among the latest fatalities, 38 were recorded over the last few days while 39 were designated as Covid deaths after receiving appeals based on the new guidelines of the Centre and the directions of the Supreme Court.
Cases drop in TN
Despite testing 2,000 more samples, the number of new Covid-19 cases reported from Tamil Nadu saw a fall, albeit marginal, compared with earlier figures. On Sunday, the state screened 157,000 samples, of which 30,580 tested positive; on Saturday the number stood at 30,744. The death count, however, increased from 33 to 40 during the same time period. Health minister Ma Subramanian said that most of the victims were unvaccinated and that, unlike the second wave, the case fatality ratio is low.
In Chennai, the spread is declining. The district, which was reporting around 9,000 fresh cases last week, reported only 6,383 on Sunday. Test Positivity Rate (TPR) of the district has now dropped to 23.6% and Chennai has moved to the twelfth position in the district-wise TPR chart.
