Bengaluru, Nov 27: After, four new Covid-19 clusters found various parts of Karnataka in the last one week, Karnataka Revenue minister, R. Ashoka on Saturday said that the state government would issue fresh directives to all schools and colleges to postpone all seminars and cultural events in order to avoid outbreak of the deadly mutant virus that has caused upheaval across the globe for the last two years.
Mr Ashoka, who is also the vice-chairman for the Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA), told reporters that most of these clusters reported in various parts of the state are directly or indirectly linked with mega cultural events or seminars that were held in respective colleges in the last couple of weeks.
“We are worried over the safety of children, hence, the state has tentatively decided to issue directives to all colleges and other institutions to postpone all seminars and cultural events that have been planned in future,” he said after attending the key Covid-review meeting along with Chief Minister, Basavaraj Bommai and others in the state here.
He said that the state government has not decided to enforce blanket ban on holding cultural or any event as such but if the Covid situation worsens further, the state will have no option but to rethink harsher measures like enforcing ban on all public gatherings in future.
“After the World Health Organisation (WHO) describing the new strain (Omicron), which was first announced by scientists in South Africa, as highly transmissible, has prompted us to review the situation in the state too. According to our health experts Omicron, which it has been named, could potentially be more dangerousthan the Delta variant. It has so far been reported in South Africa, Hong Kong, Botswana, Israel and Belgium. Hence, we need to be more cautious before the situation gets out of our control,” he warned.
Karnataka to write letter to the Union Government seeking permission to start administering booster dose of anti-Covid vaccine for frontline workers:
The minister said that the review meeting also decided to write a letter to teh Center seeking its nod to commence inoculating boosters dose of anti-Covid vaccine for frontline workers in the state.
“Already various countries like Israel have begun to inoculate boosters doses its populace, hence, we are redrawing our plans in this regard,” he said.
