April becomes the worst month for Bengaluru as it recorded the highest Covid cases

Bengaluru: The city witnesses its highest number of Covid cases in a day with 26,756 cases on Friday. Astonishingly, with 3,19,007 cases, April has had the maximum number of Covid cases in a month. As this month comes to an end, 42.15 per cent of cases were added in April. Bengaluru’s total caseload is now 7,56,740.

In Bengaluru, 18 cases are reported every minute and 1,115 cases every hour. On comparing various monthly scores, it shows that there were 5,435 cases in Bengaluru till June 2020 (first 114 days). July saw an increase with 52,406 cases, August had 75,514, September 1,03,758, October 1,00,958, November 32,101, December 18,551, January 10,311, February 6,813 and March 2021 31,886 cases.

“The reason for the alarming rise in cases could be due to multiple reasons. It could be due to the double mutation which is known to explode unheralded. This being the Indian variant could be behaving like the UK variant which was very infectious. On the other hand, this is not surprising as it was waiting to happen as the cases significantly rise as we are heading towards the peak”, said Dr GB Sattur, member of the Covid task force.

An addition of 93 deaths on Friday increased the city’s Covid deaths to 6,375. April recorded 1,745 deaths and has accounted for 27.37 per cent of total covid deaths in Bengaluru till now. “The reason for the huge spike is due to the negligence on the part of people and officials as everyone was letting their guard down. There have been possible reinfections because of a loss of antibodies and new virus variants have all contributed to the surge. The “double mutant” variant, known as B.1.617, first detected in Maharashtra, is currently the predominant one in the country and it’s lethal and more infectious. There are also other variants like those first found in the UK and in Brazil that is spreading faster in the country”, said Dr Jagadish Hiremath, medical director of Ace Suhas Hospital.

Also, the number of patients getting discharged are much lower contributing to only 16.2 per cent of those discharged since the outbreak of the pandemic. This is why the active covid cases in the city, which are 2,59,058 are the highest in the country, which is now 34.2 per cent of the current caseload.  Hiremath added, “A virus has only one purpose – to reproduce. It is programmed to hijack your cells to crank out offspring, which then infect others. It does not discriminate who it infects. It doesn’t care what political party you belong to, what race you are, where you live, where you went to school and what religious beliefs you have etc. If you let up on the brakes, the virus will take advantage of any opening you give it.”

An increase in the rate of testing is also a reason for the surge in cases. The highest number of tests were done in April with 22.95 lakh. Hiremath said, “Thus, we see a jump in the test sample size and the positivity rate. If we as a country religiously follow Covid Appropriate behaviour, we contain the virus within three to four weeks.”