Karanataka: Contact tracing failed as the cases are getting increased day-by-day

Bengaluru: Just after three weeks of the appreciation from The Union Health Ministry regarding Karnataka's handling of Covid-19, especially its mechanism for contact tracing. It has taken a big hit. On Thursday alone, of the reported 2,228 new Covid-19 cases, contact tracing was underway for 1,784 cases. Common people and elected representatives are raising concerns over the health department and district administration officials not contacting them despite being primary and secondary contacts of positive patients.

Between July 3 and July 9, of the 13,089 cases reported across the state, contact tracing of 10,230 patients was still in progress. Government sources said that contacts of a very small percentage of positive cases have been traced so far. As on Thursday, sources of transmission for 13,395 of the total 31,105 cases were still unknown.

Former Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president wife Tabu Rao, and Gandhinagar MLA Dinesh Gundu Rao, took to their social media pages to share the concerns.

"One of our staff members developed Covid-19 like symptoms and we got him tested on June 30. The results of July 3 returned positive. The BBMP should have contacted him immediately and shifted him to a Covid care centre. There was no such call and we had to admit him to a designated hospital on our own. The BBMP should have started contact tracing without delay, but no action has been taken to date and no one can imagine how many people could have contracted the virus from him," Tabu Rao wrote.

Similar concerns have been raised by many citizens. A minister's personal staff said that they did not receive any contact tracing calls from the BBMP even after the minister's kin tested positive earlier in June.

"It is a waste of resources, effort and time to trace primary and secondary contacts now with cases piling up by the thousands every day. The focus is now to reduce the death rate. We have gone past the scenario where contact tracing was important," says a government official.

Speaking on the issue, Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar said, "The same people who have been doing contact tracing for the last four months are continuing with it and are tired. I agree that it has not been as good in the last two weeks as it was in the last 4 months. We have decided to change our model to local, booth level contact tracing and will make sure that it is done."