Karnataka decided Tuesday to extend the existing Covid-19 curbs such as night curfew and the weekend curfew till the end of January, wary of the way the virus is spreading, taking the state's positivity to 10.30 per cent.
The existing curbs were to end on January 19.
The decision to extend the curbs was taken in a virtual meeting with Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai chaired with senior officials, ministers and the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC).
Considering that majority of the cases are from Bengaluru, the government has decided to open 27 Covid Care Centres in the city immediately. Daily testing in the city will also be raised to 1.3 lakh per day.
In recent days, there have been several instances of schoolchildren getting affected by the virus. The government has now decided to authorise the Deputy Commissioners of respective districts to take a call on closing residential schools and hostels based on the number of cases, Home Minister Araga Jnanendra said, briefing reporters.
The government also directed officials to ensure adequate children's wards, ICUs and other treatment facilities for children at taluk and district hospitals. Education and Health department officials were asked to conduct a general health checkup in schools every fortnight.
Triaging will be strengthened to ascertain whether an infected person needs hospitalisation or not. The government also decided to rope in the services of House Surgeons and Final Year Nursing students for Home Isolation and Triaging.
Meanwhile, all the DCs and SPs were also asked to ensure that Covid guidelines were strictly adhered to in public spaces. The officials were asked to regularly monitor the situation of those under home quarantine and to make sure that they received their health kits on time.
In other decisions, the government decided to speed up the process of booster dose, especially to frontline workers. Markets were another area of focus. In a bid to prevent crowd gathering in large markets, officials were asked to decentralise markets by breaking them into smaller units in proximity to one another.
The officials also discussed the possibility of crowd gathering in temples and other places on the occasion of Sankranti and Vaikunta Ekadashi festivals. To curb the large number of people crowding, both revenue and endowment departments have been asked to issue relevant directions.
The CM also instructed the officials to take stringent action against those holding public conventions. Further decisions are expected to be taken after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's virtual meeting with CMs on January 14.
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