Karnataka's newly elected chief minister Basavaraj Bommai today reviewed COVID-19 status of 8 districts today. The CM has instructed District Collectors to take care of it.
The chief minister speaking about the precautions for coronavirus said that medical infrastructure has to be improved in these districts and vaccination has to be done.
Bommai also met Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya and appealed to him for vaccines supply. "I have requested to increase it to 1.5 crores so that we can vaccinate 5 lakh people daily," he added.
He also said, "Resorts - homestay bookings have to be done only after the mandatory procurement of negative RT-PCR report not older than 72 hours."
As the cases of COVID-19, the government on Saturday revised its Covid guidelines to make a negative RTPCR result not older than 72 hours mandatory for those entering the state from Kerala and Maharashtra. The government today issued a revised circular in the same regards.
The RT-PCR tests is for all those travelling into the state by flights, trains, buses, and personal transport, the government circular said.
"Airlines shall issue boarding passes only to passengers carrying RT-PCR negative certificates not older than 72 hours," it said. Similar guidelines have been issued for railway authorities and conductors of buses.
"The guidelines imposed till 2nd August will be extended for the next 15 days. 72% of school teachers have been vaccinated. In the next 15 days, we will cover 100%," he said.
"We allowed people who had received one dose of vaccine. From tomorrow, it'll be necessary to have both doses. Random testing should be increased in border areas. We've discussed micro containment,tracing, testing," Bommai added.
The decision comes two days after Karnataka recorded a steep spike in new Covid cases on Thursday at 2,052, which was 34 per cent more than Wednesday's 1,531. Capital Bengaluru alone clocked 505 cases, much more than the previous day's count of 376.
The government has ordered the establishment of check posts in Dakshina Kannada, Kodagu, and Mysuru districts, which border Kerala, and Belagavi, Vijayapura, Kalburgi, and Bidar districts that are adjacent to Maharashtra.
The two neighbouring states of Karnataka account for a majority of new Covid cases in the country now.
After imposing a strict lockdown in the state the cases had seen a decline followinh which the curbs were eased later.
From July 19, it allowed cinema theatres to open and reduced the duration of night curfew by an hour. Colleges and universities were given a go-ahead to hold offline classes from July 26.
