On a day when Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa called for an emergency meeting involving the Health Minister and senior bureaucrats to take stock of the Covid situation, little did he know that he would be spending the rest of the day in the hospital after getting reinfected. The 76-year-old Lingayat strongman has tested positive for the second time in the last eight months and is currently being treated at the Manipal Hospital in Bengaluru. On Friday, speculation was rife after the call for an emergency meeting at the official quarters that Karnataka would see further restrictions to break the chain in the form of weekend lockdown and what not. After an hour and half of the meeting, all that came out was that existing restrictions of night curfew in seven districts would continue and on 20 April he would review the situation. Now as far as the Covid caseload is concerned, there were 14,859 fresh cases and 78 deaths on Friday, taking the total number of active cases to 1,07315 with the positivity rate at 11.11%. When it comes to Bengaluru, the city has been logging over 8,000 fresh cases daily with 9,917 cases on Friday and 57 deaths. Speaking to reporters after the meeting with Chief Minister, Health Minister Dr Sudhakar said that a range of issues were discussed including ramping of medical infrastructure, availability of oxygen cylinders, stocks of Remdisvir drugs, setting up of covid care centres in all districts and taluks and also vaccination programme. “The technical advisory committee had given a detailed report on the second wave and also its recommendations to contain the situation. The government is doing whatever is required to mitigate the situation. We will review the situation again in a couple of days. We have enough stocks of vaccines to last for a week and after which we will receive another batch,’’ he said. Karnataka Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai, who is said to be in the closed coterie of BSY, too reviewed the situation and warned distributors to not hoard Remdisvir drug and create artificial scarcity. “We are closely monitoring the situation. Increasing cases are a big worry but there are no plans of lockdown. over 60% cases are from Bengaluru. We are focused on micro containment zones. If the caseload increases further, we will go for larger containment zones and seal down. We will give charge of these containment zones to senior officials to manage them.”
