Kerala reported 5,023 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday when 61,612 samples were tested in the last 24 hours.
For the first time since the third wave of COVID-19 peaked, the State’s active COVID cases fell below the 50,000 mark. On Wednesday, the State’s active case pool dropped to 47,354, with 11,077 persons reported to have recovered from the disease on the day. About 6.6 % of the active cases are currently hospitalised.
Hospitalisations have been declining fast and on Wednesday, the figure dipped below the 3,000 mark. The total number of patients admitted with moderate or severe COVID in hospitals in the State now stand at 2,928. New hospital admissions on the day was 443.
The current ICU occupancy of COVID patients in both public and private hospitals in the State dipped further to 591 on Wednesday. The ventilator occupancy remains below 200 at 169. On Wednesday, the State declared 67 COVID deaths, of which 13 occurred within the last 24 hours and 54 were deaths that occurred in the last few days but that were declared only in the last 24 hours. The State also added 121 pending COVID deaths to the official list of COVID fatalities. These are deaths that have now been accepted as COVID deaths by the government as per the new guidelines of the Centre and following the appeals filed by families. In all, the official cumulative COVID-19 case fatality in the State rose to 64,591. Of these, 29,558 (45.7%) deaths were added after October 2021, following the death reconciliation exercise. The State’s cumulative COVID-19 burden now stands at 64,83,773 cases.
Among districts, Ernakulam reported the highest number of new cases with 825 cases, Kozhikode 574, Thiruvananthapuram 574, Kottayam 437, Kollam 364, Malappuram 342, Thrissur 337, Idukki 299, Alappuzha 282, Pathanamthitta 252, Palakkad 225, Wayanad 230, Kannur 188, and Kasaragod 94 cases.
