Baby girl dies of COVID-19 in State

Three persons test positive, 15 declared free of the disease on Friday

An official, wearing a face cover, dusts files that have been lying idle for nearly a month at the otherwise busy Kanayannur taluk office in Kochi. Non-essential government offices that had remained closed following the COVID-19 lockdown were opened on Friday after partial relaxation of curbs in the Orange zone

The third COVID-19-related death in the State was reported on Friday when a four-month-old baby girl, a native of Manjeri in Malappuram district, passed away at the Institute of Maternal and Child Health (IMCH), a wing of the Government Medical College Hospital in Kozhikode.

The infant, with a congenital heart disease, had been undergoing treatment for pneumonia and respiratory problems.

Her mortal remains were laid to rest in line with the COVID-19 protocol later in the day.

The body fluid samples of her parents have been sent for lab tests. The doctors who attended to her in Malappuram district have been asked to go in quarantine. Efforts to trace the source of infection are on.

Source unknown

Expressing sadness over the death, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said it was a matter of concern that the source of the infant’s infection remained unknown. Efforts were on to trace the epidemiological links and to do COVID-19 testing on a large scale.

On Friday, three persons tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in the State, while 15 were declared free of the disease, including a 62-year-old in Pathanamthitta who had one of the longest hospital stay of 47 days after she tested positive for the virus.

All new cases are from Kasaragod and they all contracted the disease through their contacts with imported cases.

Kerala has so far reported 450 positive cases of COVID-19. While 116 are currently undergoing treatment, 331 have recovered from the disease. The number of people under COVID-19 surveillance network is 21,725, of whom 452 are in isolation in hospitals.

Kannur district has become the district with the maximum number of patients on treatment with 56 in hospitals.

Mr. Vijayan gave a grim reminder to the people that “nothing is over yet” as far as COVID-19 outbreak is concerned and the ‘‘worst is yet to come.’’

Disease transmission

“There are many who believe that our troubles are over. But our problems are far from over and the threat of the third stage of disease transmission, when there would be massive community spread of the infection, is very real. We are looking at disease transmission projections which say that we will have to arrange treatment facilities for several lakhs,” he said.