Bengaluru, Dec 26: Ten more passengers who returned from the UK since November 25 have tested covid positive on Friday taking the tally of UK returnee covid patients to 14 in Karnataka.
Dr Vijayendra BK, Chief Health Officer, Public Health, BBMP, said, “Seven of these are from Bengaluru. We haven’t received the lab reports for Friday but on Thursday, four patients tested positive, on Wednesday one patient tested positive, and on Tuesday two patients tested positive. We have only been focussing on the UK returnees from the past few days and contact tracing for these patients is underway.”
Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr K Sudhakar had recently said that nearly 2,500 people came to the state from the UK between November 25 and December 22 in flights operated by Air India and British Airways, and efforts were on to trace, monitor their health and subject them to tests.
Responding to criticism against the government, the minister observed that this is the very government that has achieved a recovery rate of 97.5%, and brought down the fatality rate to 1.22%.
"After the new variant was discovered, countries like Britain and Germany have adopted stringent measures like ordering lockdown and latter enforcing curfew. What does this indicate?" he asked.
Sudhakar added that the decision to enforce curfew after 11 pm was taken keeping in mind the public interest so as to ensure that normal life is not affected. “When almost all our festivals this year were celebrated in a subdued manner, why is this outrage against this night curfew as though it is necessary for youngsters to have fun or party during the new year," he said while cautioning the opposition parties that they will be responsible if anything goes wrong.
The state government had announced an eight-day night curfew, but withdrew it on Thursday hours before it was supposed to go into effect.
Several ministers in the cabinet reportedly took objections to the decision of enforcing a night curfew while the Opposition expressed apprehensions on whether it would help in containing the spread of the virus, considering the curfew was between 11 pm and 5 am.
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