CORONA IN 'INDIAN IT HUB' BANGALORE: WHY DID CITY WITNESS 10 FOLD RISE WITHIN TWO AND A HALF WEEKS?

From being hailed as the model city for its swift efforts in containing COVID-19, Bengaluru is currently under a strict 7- day lockdown till July 11. The city has witnessed an exponential surge in cases over the last two and a half weeks.

When the lockdown ended on May 31, Bengaluru had just recorded 374 cases but the number of cases have been rising at an alarming rate since June 27. The number of cases have also multiplied by almost 10 times within the last 17 days, reporting the highest growth rate that any metro city in the country has seen. 

“Bengaluru has added 18,079 cases in the last two and a half weeks (June 27-July 13) averaging above a thousand daily cases in this period. With the exception of the 7th, it has recorded more than 1,000 daily cases every day since the 3rd of July. The city witnessed its highest single-day surge on July 12 with 1,544 cases. It registered a higher daily count (1,336 cases) than Delhi (1,246), Mumbai (1,158) and Chennai (1,235) on July 13,” CNN News 18 reported.

The city also reported a rise in COVID19 deaths in the last 10 days. From having a total of 105 fatalities till the 3rd of July, the city has reported double the same count within a matter of one and a half weeks. 

What are the reasons? 

Bengaluru’s model was hailed by the rest of the country because it was successful in accomplishing the 4Ts that is testing, tracing, tracking and treatment. However, when the lockdown ended, many restrictions were eased resulting in people breaking social distancing norms coupled with sudden increase in inter-city, inter- district and inter- state movement which subsequently resulted in the surge in number of cases. The authorities were not ready to tackle this sudden surge.

“For the period between June 23 and July 7, the source of transmission remained untraced (till July 9) in as many as 9,867 of the 9,964 reported cases, that is, 99.02 per cent,” CNN News 18 reported.  This is being attributed as one of the reasons behind the surge since, tracing the sources subsequently could have led to increase in number of cases.

Nevertheless, residents and medical experts in Bengaluru hope that this lockdown would be effective in curbing the spread of the virus.