Kerala’s COVID-19 case graph, which began plateauing a week ago continued the trend on Tuesday too, reporting 6,862 new cases, when 61,138 samples were tested in the past 24 hours.
The test positivity rate dipped slightly from the 12-14% range, where it had stabilised, to 11.2 % on Tuesday
Epidemiologists had earlier projected that with the effective reproductive number R going below 1, the case graph will begin to plateau in the last week of October, with the State reporting between 7,274 and 9,161 cases daily.
The average weekly growth rate as well as the doubling time of cases has also been down the past week, indicating that while the intensity of disease transmission has lessened, low-level transmission will continue to happen across State. The doubling time, which was 17.2 days on October 2 had gone up to 41.1 days as on October 30.
It has been a matter of great relief to the Health Department that for the past few days, the number of recoveries being reported in the State has been higher than the new cases reported daily. On Tuesday also, 8,802 COVID patients were discharged from hospitals.
The steady increase in the number of recoveries has further brought down the State’s active case pool to 84,713 patients. While the cumulative case burden reached 4,51,130 cases, the recoveries till date has reached 3,64,745.
COVID-19 deaths, however, do seem to be happening at a consistent pace in the State, pushing toll graph up slowly.
On Tuesday, the Health Department released the details of 26 more deaths which entered the official COVID death list, taking the cumulative toll to 1,559.
Of the deaths reported , Thiruvananthapuram reported eight, Kozhikode five, Thrissur four, Ernakulam and Kottayam two each, while Alappuzha, Kollam, Wayanad, Kasaragod, and Malappuram reported one death each.
On Tuesday, according to official figures, 807 persons are critically ill and being treated in ICUs in hospitals across the State, with 210 on ventilator support.
Of the new cases reported, 6,755 cases (98.4%) are locally acquired infections, with 783 cases remaining untraced to any known source of infection. This also includes infections reported in 73 health care workers.
The decline in test positivity rate and the increase in case doubling rate is very evident across all districts. The doubling time in Thiruvananthapuram, which had reported the highest number of cases consistently for over three months, has gone up to 57.2 days, while in Kasaragod, which had witnessed intense transmission at one point, the doubling time is 88.2 days.
At present, the test positivity rate is the highest at Alappuzha at 17.1%, in Thiruvananthapuram it is 13 %, while it is lowest at Idukki at 5.9%
Among districts, Thrissur reported 856 cases, Ernakulam 850, Kozhikode 842, Alappuzha 760, Thiruvananthapuram 654, Kollam 583, Kottayam 507, Malappuram 467, Palakkad 431, Kannur 335, Pathanamthitta 245, Kasaragod 147, Wayanad 118 and Idukki 67 cases.
The active caseload in districts are also coming down with only Ernakulam reporting a case load of 12,210. In all other districts, the active caseload has remained below 10,000 with Thrissur having 9,836 cases, Kozhikode 9,160, Thiruvananthapuram 8,457, and Malappuram 8,198.
