An increased testing capacity compared to other states in the country has seemingly helped Karnataka and its capital city Bengaluru to have a comparatively lower COVID-19 infection rate. This even though the daily increase in case load both for Karnataka and Bengaluru remain high among other states and cities in the country respectively. Bengaluru has a total of 3,15,559 cumulative positive cases only second to national capital Delhi which has 3,36,750. While Karnataka has the third highest number of cases followed by Maharashtra (16,09,516) and Andhra Pradesh (7,89,553).
Karnataka has reported an average of 7612 cases daily for the period between October 11-20 which is less than the average of 8859 cases daily recorded between September 11-20. At the same time the average daily testing for September 11-20 was 63,528 and for October 11-20 has increased to 99,229.
The same trend can be observed for Bengaluru city too. The city had recorded an average of 3402 cases per day between September 11-20 and it has remained the same at 3400 cases daily for October 11-20. But here too, the testing average which was close to 25,000 daily has increased to 46,132.
More importantly, officials in Karnataka claim that the state is doing better in terms of infection prevention as they are doing the highest number of RT-PCR tests while most states are doing more of antigen based rapid tests.
While antigen tests are faster and cheaper, they have proved to be giving a high number of false negatives.
Karnataka Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar said the state is carrying out 80% of the total tests with RT-PCR tests
Earlier this week, TNM had reported how even as the daily caseload for Bengaluru has remained the same over the past month, the mortality rate too has improved. The mortality rate which was at 1.39% on September 16, is at 1.15% as of October 16. Mortality rate is the number of deaths per 100 positive patients. Experts say increased testing coupled with increased surveillance can help early detection of cases which in turn help save lives.