The sudden spurt in the COVID-19 positive cases in the northern districts of Karnataka, particularly Belagavi and Vijayapura, has put the district administrations on high alert. The northern districts recorded a total of 28 positive cases, of the 36 new cases in the State, on Thursday.

Belagavi accounted for the majority of the cases, with 17 people testing positive for the infection. With the Thursday’s results, Belagavi district has the third highest number of cases in the State after Bengaluru Urban and Mysuru districts. Vijayapura recorded seven more cases, while Kalaburagi recorded three new cases and Gadag recorded its second case.

With 17 new cases, the COVID-19 tally of Belagavi district has gone up to 36 now. The Thursday’s tally includes five persons with a travel history to Delhi. Their infection was confirmed after repeat tests. All the 12 others are primary contacts of the earlier cases of affected persons.

The new cases include eight persons from Hire Bagewadi, seven from Kudachi near Raibag, and one each from Chikkodi and Belagavi. The Raibag cases include one person each from Maharashtra, Goa, and Vijayapura who are residing in Raibag.

Soon after the test results came in, Belagavi Deputy Commissioner S.B. Bommanahalli held a meeting with officials and asked them to strictly enforce containment protocol and other measures to stop the spread of the disease. He announced that two new containment zones would be created at Yallur village on the outskirts of Belagavi and Sankeshwar.

There are nine containment zones in the district now, including the military cantonment camp area in Belagavi, Belgundi, Yellur, Sankeshwar, Peeranwadi, Hire Bagewadi, and Kudachi.

Travel history

With seven new cases, Vijayapura district’s tally has now gone up to 17 — all belonging to two families — with one person dead.

Of the seven patients, six are primary contacts of patient 221. This patient has the history of travelling to Ichalkaranji in Maharashtra. The other case, an 18 month old baby girl, who is a primary contact of patient 228 who has the history of people of Pune visiting the family to attend a funeral. The district administration has so far quarantined 373 people for coming into contact with P-221 and P-228 and sent their throat swabs for testing.

Seven deaths in NK

With the Thursday’s spurt in cases, northern districts now have a total of 125 cases (out of 315 in the State) of which seven persons have succumbed to the infection so far while four have been discharged from hospital.