The third wave of COVID-19 in the State seems to be receding as fast as it had scaled the peak and on Thursday, the daily cases went below the 20,000 mark.
Testing has come down in the State but even then, except on one occasion, the case graph has been going down consistently after it registered the highest single-day figure of 55,475 cases on January 25 during this third wave of COVID-19.
On Thursday, Kerala registered 18,420 new cases when 82,575 samples were tested in the last 24 hours.
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The active case pool has dipped significantly to 2,32,980 cases, with 43,286 recovering from the disease on Thursday. For the past few days, the number of reported recoveries have been consistently more than the new cases.
Hospitalisations are also going down steadily and on Thursday, the total number of patients admitted with moderate or severe COVID in hospitals in the State decreased to 7,848. New hospital admissions on the day was 1,205.
ICU occupancy is also on a steady downward trend. The current ICU occupancy of COVID patients in both public and private hospitals in the State on Thursday reduced to 1,158. The ventilator occupancy also went down to 297.
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On Thursday, the State declared 341 COVID deaths, of which 20 occurred within the last 24 hours and 168 were deaths which occurred in the last few days but which were declared only in the last 24 hours.
The State also added 153 pending deaths to the official list of COVID fatalities. These are deaths which 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.
The cumulative COVID-19 case fatality in the State rose to 61,134. The cumulative case burden now stands at 63,65,051.
Among the districts, Ernakulam reported the highest number of new cases with 3,012 cases, followed by Thiruvananthapuram 1,999, Kottayam 1,749, Kollam 1,656, Thrissur 1,532, Kozhikode 1,477, Malappuram 1,234, Idukki 1,091, Alappuzha 1,025, Pathanamthitta 972, Kannur 950, Palakkad 858, Wayanad 638 and Kasaragod 227.
EOM