Project Jeevan Raksha, an initiative of management consulting firm Proxima Consulting and non-profit organisation Public Health Foundation of India has projected that Karnataka will have 9,25,000 COVID-19 cases cumulatively by December 12. This would mean the state will add 2,392 cases daily on average for the next 26 days. As of Monday evening, Karnataka recorded  8,62,804  cases including 11,541 deaths, according to the state COVID-19 bulletin. 

The release on Tuesday states that since August, positivity and mortality per million population has increased by 10 times and 5 times respectively. “This continues to increase every day. This indicates continued prevalence of viruses in the state.  The current Gross TPR (GTPR) of Karnataka is 9.2% and effective TPR (ETPR) is 11%. The average daily testing has been ramped from 40,000 to 1,07,000. In September, the test yield was 14% which resulted in average daily cases around 8000–9000. Whereas in November, the test yield has dropped to 2%, which means every 100 tests is yielding only two COVID cases,” the study said.

Effective TPR is calculated estimating that the state carries out 20% of the tests as retests. “There is an increase in government sponsored testing as well as people-led precautionary testing. Therefore, the number of testing has increased considerably and yield has also dropped to 2% in the week ending 14th November,” the study concluded.

Incidentally, the latest projection is lower than the 10-lakh mark which they had predicted that the state would breach by November 12, in their earlier release made in mid-October. The actual number of cases was 86% of the projected infections for November 12.

For the previous two occasions, Proxima’s estimate was much closer. For September 12, they had predicted the caseload to be 4,50,000 when the actual number of cases were 4,40,411 (98%). For October 12, they had predicted 7,00,000 cases while the actual number was 7,17,915 (103%).