Kerala reported 5,328 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday when 54,098 samples were tested in the past 24 hours, taking the State’s cumulative case burden to 7,71,252 cases.
The test positivity rate remains firmly at 9.85 %, the State maintaining a TPR of 9-11% steadily for the past several weeks.
Active cases
The active case pool in the State climbed to 65,374 cases on Saturday. With 4,985 persons reported to have recovered on the day, the cumulative recoveries reported in the State ever since the pandemic began has crossed the seven lakh mark to reach 7,02,576.
The addition of 21 more deaths in the past few days to the official list of COVID fatalities on Saturday has taken the State’s COVID toll till date to 3,116. Thrissur reported four of these deaths, Pathanamthitta three, Thiruvananthapuram, Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Palakkad and Malappuram reported two deaths each while Kollam, Kozhikode, Wayanad, and Kasaragod reported one death each.
Official reports put the number of critically ill patients undergoing treatment in ICUs in various hospitals in the State at 825 with 245 requiring ventilator support.
Of the 5,328 cases reported on Saturday, the Health Department has reported a history of travel outside the State in 78 cases while 5,250 are locally acquired infections.
Amongst the locally acquired infections, in 392 cases the source of infection remains untraced while the number of healthcare workers who acquired the infection is 57.
Among districts, Ernakulam reported 743 cases, Kozhikode 596, Malappuram 580, Kottayam 540, Pathanamthitta 452, Thrissur 414, Kollam 384, Alappuzha 382, Thiruvananthapuram 290, Palakkad 240, Idukki 223, Wayanad 204, Kannur 197, and Kasaragod 83 cases.
U.K. variant
No new samples of U.K. travellers to Kerala who reached the State between December 9 and 23 tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.
Till now, 37 of the 1,609 U.K. returnees who reached the State during this period have tested positive and their samples have been sent to the NIV Pune for genome sequencing to assess if these samples could be the new SARS-CoV-2 virus variant B.1.1.7. The results of 11 samples have not found the presence of the mutant virus, while the results of others are awaited.
