BENGALURU: Covid continues to spread in rural areas, with 15 districts reporting more cases in villages than urban centres over the past two weeks. According to the Karnataka State Covid War Room, districts with higher number of Covid-positive rural pockets are Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Uttara Kannada, Kodagu, Hassan, Chikkamagaluru, Chamarajanagar, Chitradurga, Mandya, Kolar, Koppal, Haveri, Ramanagara, Tumakuru and Vijayapura. Government officials and health experts say it’s because of increased mobility and poor compliance with Covid-appropriate behaviors, though there has been no study to determine what factors resulted in its spread in rural areas.
The high number of cases in rural pockets of Dakshina Kannada, Kodagu and Chikkamagaluru has increased locals’ anger against those travelling from outside their districts, especially tourists from Bengaluru. Data shows that around 37,000 villages and 272 towns across the state have been hit by Covid in the past seven days.
The top 20 villages with most cases are from five districts of Dakshina Kannada, Kodagu, Udupi, Chamarajanagar and Chikkamagaluru. However, it’s not alarming as a majority of these districts have reported a high recovery in the past two weeks, sources said. Meanwhile, the total number of active cases in the state was 22,728 with a majority of cases from Bengaluru (8,193) followed by Dakshina Kannada (3,595). In terms of daily count, Dakshina Kannada district reported more cases (475) on Thursday than Bengaluru (321 cases)
