Kerala on Tuesday once again recorded more than 20,000 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, raising the country’s concern meter up by several notches as a third wave of the pandemic looms.
As many as 23,676 people in Kerala tested positive for COVID-19 in the last one day, pushing the state’s infection tally to 34.49 lakh, while 148 more deaths took the overall fatality count to 17,103.
The state saw a dip in daily cases on Monday, with 13,984 infections, after recording excess of 20,000 cases for six consecutive days.
The Union Health Ministry today said that 49.85% of the new cases in the past one week were reported from Kerala.
“The cases being reported in India are coming from limited areas. Districts in the states that are reporting high cases are: Kerala – 10, Maharashtra – 3, Manipur – 2, Arunachal – 1, Meghalaya – 1, Mizoram – 1. A much as 47% of cases have come from these districts, while 40% of the cases have come from Kerala alone,” Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary at the Union Health Ministry, said in New Delhi.
India’s reproductive number, which denotes the spread of COVID-19, is more than 1 in eight states, including Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Tamil Nadu.
Reproduction or reproduction number is a measure that highlights the number of people a coronavirus positive person infects, thereby reflecting the severity of its spread. A number of one or below one indicates a slowly spreading virus while any number above 1 indicates a rapid spread.
The central government team that went to Kerala to understand the reason behind the steady spike in cases found an upward trend in Malappuram where the positivity rate is more than 17.2%.
Surveillance needs to be increased in Kerala, and buffer zones need to be created. Contact tracing needs to increase. Restrictions for one week in ABC model have not shown much impact. The containment approach given by us need to be followed properly. RT-PCR testing needs to be ramped up,” Agarwal said.
The Health Ministry official said that contact tracing should 1:20 but it is around 1:5 in Kerala at present.
“This is one of the main reasons for the spread. Home isolation needs to be taken more seriously,” he added.
