Covid Surge: ‘No Proposal To Impose Complete Lockdown’, Says Karnataka Health Minister

“We want people to strictly follow the regulations,” he said while answering a poser on open defiance of lockdown at various places and cited the situation in Maharashtra where a 44-day lockdown brought the infection under control to a good extent.

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Kalaburagi: Asserting there is “no proposal before the government to impose a complete lockdown”, Karnataka Health Minister Dr K. Sudhakar on Saturday appealed to the people to follow all Covid-19 regulations instead of loitering around unnecessarily.

Sudhakar, however, admitted that at least three to four weeks of strict measures were required to contain the spread of the Covid-19.

“We want people to strictly follow the regulations,” he said while answering a poser on open defiance of lockdown at various places and cited the situation in Maharashtra where a 44-day lockdown brought the infection under control to a good extent.

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Responding to another question on the vaccination drive for people above 18 years of age could not take off fully from May 1 as announced by the Centre, the Health Minister said: “We have a stock of vaccines, which is not huge to meet the requirement. We will inform people once the vaccines arrive in the state.”

Sudhakar said Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa-led government in Karnataka has set a target to vaccinate everyone.

He further said there is unnecessary panic among the people, who are hoarding Remdesivir vials and oxygen fearing that they would not get in case of an emergency, adding at least 85 per cent of the infected people remain asymptomatic whereas only five to eight per cent show moderate symptoms, PTI reported.

In view of the unprecedented surge in Covid-19 cases, Karnataka imposed a lockdown from the night of April 27 till May 12.

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Karnataka has reported over 48,000 cases in a single day of which over half of the cases were in state capital Bengaluru. Over 15,000 people have so far lost their lives due to the pandemic in the state, which currently has over four lakh active cases.