Kerala’s cumulative case burden of COVID-19 cases rose to 10,30,587 cases, with the State reporting 4,650 new cases on Saturday, when 65,968 samples were tested in the past 24 hours.
The test positivity rate, which had been remaining steady, showed a slight increase to 7.05% on the day.
Of the 65,968 tests done by the State, 39,079 were rapid antigen assay while the RT-PCR test numbers numbered 24,878. Other molecular diagnostic tests like Truenat and CBNAAT constituted the remaining tests.
The State’s active case pool, which had risen past 65,000 cases last week, now dipped to 58,606 cases on Saturday, with the State registering 5,841 recoveries, which is significantly more than the number of new cases reported on the day. The cumulative recoveries reported by the State ever since the pandemic began thus rose to 9,67,630 cases.
The addition of 13 new deaths that took place in the past few days to the official list of COVID fatalities in the State on Saturday took the State’s cumulative COVID toll till date to 4,074 deaths.
Thrissur reported three deaths, Kannur, Kozhikode, Alappuzha and Malappuram two each while one death was reported at Pathanamthitta.
The number of critically ill COVID patients in the State, currently being treated in ICUs in various hospitals in the State, was 741 as on Saturday, according to official reports, with 230 of them requiring ventilator assistance.
Among districts, Kozhikode reported the maximum number of new cases at 602, Ernakulam 564, Malappuram 529, Thrissur 503, Kollam 444, Alappuzha 382, Thiruvananthapuram 328, Pathanamthitta 317, Kottayam 267, Palakkad 193, Kannur 176 Wayanad 143, Kasaragod 124, and Idukki 78 cases.
CM-COVID
Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, said that new COVID cases in the State were showing a progressive declining trend and when compared to the previous week, there had been a dip in new cases by 5.8%.
He said that ICMR’s sero prevalence study had revealed that Kerala had been one of the States where the disease transmission had been the lowest, leaving a huge chunk of the population still susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. However, ICMR’S study had not covered the entire State.
The State-wide sero prevalence survey commissioned by the Health Department was progressing and the report was expected to be released soon. This would give a more comprehensive picture of COVID-19 transmission in the State, he added.
He said that while disease transmission in the State had been slow and at lower proportions, in the past few months, transmission had shown a significant increase. Vigil needed to be exercised strictly, as a large proportion of the State’s population was still vulnerable to the virus, he said.
Mr. Vijayan said that vaccination was one of the primary tools to break disease transmission and people need not be apprehensive about receiving the vaccines. The government was taking all efforts to make vaccines available to everyone at the earliest, he added.
