22 new COVID-19 cases in Bengaluru in 6 days, mainly from two wards in city

Coronavirus

Most of the new cases are connected to the Hogasandra and Padarayanapura clusters.

TNM Staff

Representation photo/File photo by Prajwal Bhat

Over the last six days since the lockdown restrictions were eased in Bengaluru, which is a red zone, 22 new cases of COVID-19 have emerged. However, except for two, the remaining 20 cases were contacts of patients who had earlier tested positive.  Two of the biggest clusters of cases in the city are in Hogasandra and Padarayanapura with a total of 36 and 40 active cases reported respectively from these two wards so far. On Friday night, five contacts of patient zero in Hogasandra, P419, a daily-wage worker from Bihar, tested positive.  In Padarayanapura- a place with Tablighi Jamaat meet returnees- three more cases were reported on Saturday after the BBMP collected randomised samples of people in the ward. In addition, four contacts of a patient who was tested positive in Padarayanapura also tested positive. These include patients 762, 763, 773 and 774, all of whom were primary contacts of patient 454. Patient 454 was another person from Padarayanapura, who was tested positive during randomised tests.  Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar directed the Health Department to take swab samples of all senior citizens in Padarayanapura. There are around 7,500 houses in the ward with around 40,000 people residing in Padarayanapura containment zone. Mobile kiosks will be set up in Padarayanapura to fast track sample collection. The testing laboratory at Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology will be used for testing these samples, the Health Department said.  The first positive case to be reported during the randomised testing was patient 454 on April 28. This was a 48-year-old asymptomatic man. On April 30, two more residents of Padarayanapura aged 20 and 28 tested positive after randomised testing. Since three cases had cropped up in a span of two days, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike identified five heavily populated streets in Padarayanapura and took samples from one random person in each street. With the increasing number of cases in the area, the BBMP has now decided to include people of all age groups for randomised testing. Prior to Friday, BBMP was conducting randomised tests only for those above 19 years of age.  Two additional cases were reported in Shivajinagar on Saturday. Patients 708 and 711, who are contacts of patient 653, a housekeeping staff at a private hospital in Shivajinagar, who tested positive for the novel coronavirus earlier. This takes the total number of cases in Shivajinagar to seven.  The two new cases reported this week include patients 654 and 701, both with Influenza-Like Illness.   

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