Bengaluru, Aug 10 (IANS): As the hotspot of the pandemic in Karnataka, Bengaluru has registered 20,871 Covid positive cases in the past 10 days, an official said on Monday.
For the last 10 days, the city accounted for 1,948; 2,665; 2,147; 2,554; 1,848; 2,035; 1,497; 2,105; 1,852 and 2,220 infections daily respectively since July 31.
On an average, the city has been accounting for more than 2,000 cases a day.
Of 1.78 lakh cases across the state, the city alone accounts for 74,185, recording positive cases at a rate of 17.9 per cent cases , higher than the state rate of 10.44 per cent.
As part of contact tracing in the city, government has identified 3.7 lakh people of whom 1.6 lakh are primary contacts and 2 lakh secondary contacts.
At the state level, though Karnataka has seen only 3,221 cases by the end of May, number of infections shot up to 15,242 by the end of June.
Starting July, the real spike in cases in the southern state had begun, reaching 44,077 in just the first two weeks of the month.
In the next five days, by July 19, infections in the state rose to 71,069 and later spiked to 1.78 lakh by Saturday.
The two months of June and July proved very costly to the state, accounting for the bulk of the cases. June, July and the first nine days of August accounted for 98 per cent of all infections in Karnataka.
Though the total number of cases at present stands at 1.78 lakh in Karnataka, active cases are 80,973.
Incidentally, Karnataka has overtaken Delhi in the number of coronavirus infections, the national capital accounts for 1.45 lakh cases.
Despite 93,908 recoveries, Karnataka currently accounts for the fourth highest number of Covid deaths with 3,198, after Maharashtra (17,367), Tamil Nadu (4,808) and Delhi (4,111).
Among major metropolitan cities in India, Bengaluru is the fourth most Covid-affected with 74,185 cases, trailing New Delhi (1.45 lakh), Mumbai (1.22 lakh) and Chennai (1.08 lakh).
Containment Zones (CZ) in Bengaluru shot up to 28,716, of which 14,010 are currently active.
Reinforcing the health department response capabilities, government has increased the count of ambulances to 665.
"As promised by Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, 665 ambulances have been deployed across Bengaluru city to facilitate the movement of Covid and non-Covid patients to Covid Care Centres (CCC) and hospitals," said Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar.
Covid testing labs in the state rose to 100 by Sunday, of which 45 are government-run and 55 private labs.
Across the testing laboratories, the health department has conducted 16.68 lakh tests so far.
On Saturday, a KAS officer discharging duties at Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (BIEC) succumbed to a heart attack. Earlier in July, a Covid volunteer in Mysuru had also died following heart attack.