Alarm bells: Wedding turns into a superspreading event

Sixteen people who attended the event at Shivamogga infected; experts say the next surge depends on how responsibly people behave now

In what is probably the first known superspreading event in Karnataka after the lockdown was lifted, 16 persons, including four from Bengaluru, who attended a wedding in Shivamogga on June 27-28, have contracted COVID-19. One of them, a 61-year-old resident of BTM Layout, is critical while his wife and daughter have also been hospitalised. Although only the 61-year-old father and his 18-year-old daughter attended the wedding, they spread the infection to two others in the family (wife and son) after returning to Bengaluru on July 1. Ameen e Mudassar, member of Emergency Response Team, a volunteer group that offers free services to people in getting tested and finding beds, who got the patients admitted late on Wednesday night, told The Hindu that the father is in the ICU at Jayanagar General Hospital as his oxygen saturation had dropped to 88. He added that husband and wife received one dose of Covishield vaccine last fortnight.