5,063 new cases of COVID-19 in State

With 2,475 recoveries, active case pool reaches 36,185; test positivity at 8.01%

Police distribute face masks and hand sanitiser to Zoo visitors following the spike in COVID-19 cases, in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday.

Kerala’s COVID-19 case graph is climbing relentlessly, adding over 700 new cases on a daily basis. Though the second wave was expected to be rising in the State by April last week, two weeks after the heat and dust of the Assembly polls, it certainly looks like the graph is already on an upswing.

While the State Health administration has expressed its confidence that intensive containment and preventive measures and an aggressive vaccination drive in the next three weeks can reduce the pace of disease transmission, it is certainly a race against time and one in which the virus has the upper hand, public health experts said.

The fact that the test positivity rate in the State, which was hovering between 5-6% since the past three days, has shot up to 8.01% on Friday, indicates that the pace of disease transmission is much faster and intense in the second wave.

On Friday, the State reported 5,063 new cases of COVID-19, when 63,240 samples were tested in the past 24 hours. The State’s cumulative case burden ever since the pandemic began, rose to 11,54,010 cases.

The active case pool of the State is growing rapidly and now has 36,185 patients. With 2,475 recoveries being reported on the day, the cumulative recoveries reported by the State ever since the pandemic began touched 11,12,758.

Hospital admissions are also rising at an alarming pace, adding close to 200 patients on a daily basis. If on Thursday, 759 people got admitted to hospitals, on Friday, this rose to 933, with 11,517 people newly added to home or institutional quarantine

The addition of 22 new deaths which took place in the past few days to the official list of COVID fatalities in the State on Friday took the State’s cumulative COVID toll till date to 4,750 deaths.

Palakkad and Kollam reported four deaths each, Ernakulam and Kannur three each, Alappuzha, Thrissur and Kozhikode two each, while one death each was reported from Wayanad and Kasaragod.

The number of critically ill COVID patients in the State who are currently being treated in ICUs in various hospitals in the State is 551 on Friday, according to official reports, while the number of patients requiring ventilator assistance also rose to 171.

Among districts, Kozhikode reported the maximum number of new cases with 715 cases, Ernakulam 607, Kannur 478, Thiruvananthapuram 422, Kottayam 417, Thrissur 414, Malappuram 359, Kollam 260, Pathanamthitta 259, Palakkad 252, Kasaragod 247, Idukki 246, Alappuzha 235 and Wayanad 152 cases.