New cases of COVID-19 have been steadily dropping in the State since the past few weeks and in the last one week alone, there has been a 13% drop in new cases. The active case pool has dropped by over 30% in the past one month, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said here on Thursday.
He said the active case pool on thursday, 44,441, is the lowest since September 25.
Kerala’s cumulative case burden rose to 10,69,660, with 2,616 new cases when 63,041 samples were tested in the past 24 hours. The test positivity rate which dropped below 5% for the first time on March, remained at 4.15%.
The State has been reporting significantly higher number of recoveries than new cases since the past several days, helping the active case pool drop steadily. With 4,156 persons reported to have recovered from the disease, the active case pool has dropped to 44,441. The cumulative recoveries reported ever since the pandemic began thus rose to 10,20,671 cases.
The addition of 14 new deaths has taken the toll till date to 4,255.
Among districts, Kozhikode reported the maximum number of new cases with 345 cases, Kollam 258, Thrissur 248, Ernakulam 228, Kottayam 224, Alappuzha 223, Thiruvananthapuram 222, Kannur 204, Malappuram 171, Pathanamthitta 126, Kasaragod 121, Wayanad 89, Palakkad 81 and Idukki 76.
Vaccination
Mr. Vijayan said that vaccination had been receiving good response from the public.
He said there was no room for any apprehension over Covaxin, the vaccine manufactured by Bharat Biotech, now that the interim results of Phase 3 trials of the vaccine had been announced by the ICMR.
Covaxin has been found to be 81% efficacious in preventing severe COVID-19 disease and mortality. It is also found to neutralise B.1.1.7, the virus variant first reported in the U.K. Hence, people should now set aside all doubts and accept both Covishield and Covaxin vaccines, Mr. Vijayan said.
