The State reported 12 more COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, all of which were imported cases of infection.
While four persons came from abroad, the remaining came from Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said here during his daily media briefing.
Kannur accounted for five of these cases, Malappuram three, and Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Thrissur, and Palakkad one case each.
The State has reported 642 cases so far, out of which 142 are currently undergoing treatment in various hospitals, while 497 have recovered from the disease.
The State has put 72,000 people on surveillance, out of whom, except for the 455 who have been admitted in isolation rooms in hospitals, the rest are in home or institutional quarantine, Mr. Vijayan said.
New hotspots
Four new regions were added to the State’s hotspot list, taking the number of total hotspots in the State to 33. The additions are Koruthode in Kottayam district and Panoor municipality, Chokli, and Mayyil in Kannur district.
Mr. Vijayan said that the results of the sentinel surveillance sample testing were ample evidence that community transmission was yet to happen in the State.
He said that the State had tested samples from 5,630 persons so far, from selected vulnerable groups in the community like health-care workers, the elderly and those in quarantine to assess the extent of community transmission.
However, 5,630 samples had returned a negative result while only four samples had been positive. This clearly indicates that there was no community transmission of COVID-19 in the State, he said..
Mr. Vijayan attributed this “success” to the stringent manner in which the State had been implementing the safety precautions against the pandemic, including physical distancing, hand washing, universal wearing of masks and the early quarantining of all possible suspect cases and their contacts. These measures as well as reverse quarantining would have to be tightened again, especially in containment zones, because community transmission continued to be an imminent threat now that expatriates and non-resident Keralites were flocking to the State from areas where the transmission of COVID-19 was intense, Mr. Vijayan, said.
Since May 7, 74,426 people had come into the State from abroad and the rest of the country. From among these, the State has reported 105 imported cases of COVID-19.
