Bengaluru, Domestic returnees and rising infections in contacts of earlier Covid cases continued to pummel Karnataka pandemic burden, with 213 new infections raising the state's tally to 7,213, an official said on Monday.

"New cases reported from Sunday 5 p.m. to Monday 5 p.m. 213," said a health official.

Like every day, domestic returnees were the highest among the new cases, accounting for 103 or 48 per cent of the cases.

Returnees with Maharashtra travel history constituted 85 or 83 per cent of all the returnees.

There were also 23 cases with international travel history to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Meanwhile, contacts of earlier cases turning positive are showing an upward trend with 60 such examples.

On Monday, cases spiked in Kalaburagi, Bengaluru Urban, Dharwad, Dakshina Kannada, Raichur, Yadgir, Bidar and Ballari.

Among the new cases, Kalaburagi contributed 48, followed by Bengaluru Urban (35), Dharwad (34), Dakshina Kannada (23), Raichur (18), Yadgir (13), Bidar (11), Ballari (10), Koppal (4), Vijayapura, Bagalkote and Shivamogga (3 each), Udupi, Haveri, and Ramnagar (2 each) and Hassan and Davangere (1 each).

Twenty-four patients are suffering from influenza like illness (ILI) and four from severe acute respiratory infection (SARI).

Meanwhile, two patients succumbed to the virus, a 65-year-old man from Dharwad and a 75-year-old woman from Bengaluru Urban.

Among the new cases, 130 are males and 83 females, including 14 children below the age of 10 years.

Of the total cases, 4,135 patients have been discharged, 88 have died while 56 are admitted to the ICUs.

On a positive note, in the last 24 hours, 180 patients were cured and discharged, continuing the trend of rising discharges.

However, the number of patients in ICUs has risen from 16 to 56.

On Monday, the health department tested 5,362 samples, out of which 4,738 turned negative, a drastic reduction in the number of tests which usually used to average around 10,000 per day.

In total, 4.40 lakh samples have been tested, of which 4.32 lakh have returned negative.

Currently, Yadgir is leading the state's Covid-19 burden with 516 active cases, followed by Kalaburagi (475), Bengaluru Urban (362) Raichur (310) and Udupi (291), among others.

Bengaluru Urban has accounted for 33 deaths, followed by Kalaburagi (10), Dakshina Kannada (7) and Bidar, Vijayapura, and Davangere (6 each), among others.