Intensity of transmission comes down

State logs 22,182 new cases of COVID-19 and 26,563 recoveries

People queue up to receive COVID-19 vaccination in Palakkad on Thursday.

The State logged 22,182 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, when 1,21,486 samples were tested in the past 24 hours.

Now that the intensity of COVID-19 transmission has substantially come down and vaccination coverage has increased, the State has reached a critical point when transmission will continue at a low level in the community, with occasional surges. This has now prompted the authorities to do away with the focus on testing and test positivity rate as an epidemiological indicator of disease transmission.

The State’s active case pool is coming down steadily and on Thursday it went down further to 1,86,190. The number of persons reported to have recovered from the disease on the day was 26,563.

Despite the decrease in hospitalisations, there has been no let up in COVID-19 deaths. The official cumulative fatality now stands at 23,165 with the State adding 178 deaths, most of which occurred in the past few days, to the official list.

Current ICU occupancy in both public and private hospitals dropped to 2,238. The number of patients requiring ventilator support also dropped to 956.

The number of patients newly admitted to hospitals has come down to 1,881, while the total number of patients with moderate or severe COVID in various hospitals has declined to 27,061. The cumulative case burden now stands at 44,46,228 cases.

Among districts, Thrissur reported the highest number of new cases with 3,252, Ernakulam 2,901, Thiruvananthapuram 2,135, Malappuram 2061, Kozhikode 1,792, Palakkad 1,613, Kollam 1,520, Alappuzha 1,442, Kannur 1,246, Kottayam 1,212, Pathanamthitta 1,015, Idukki 973 Wayanad 740 and Kasaragod 280.