Kerala’s COVID-19 caseload graph continued to rise steadily with 91 more persons testing positive for the disease on Tuesday.
While 80 of these new cases are imported cases of infection, detected in persons who had returned to Kerala from abroad and from other parts of the country, 11 cases acquired the infection through local transmission via contact with a known or unknown source of infection. One case of local transmission involves a health worker from Thiruvananthapuram district.
Since May 4, when expatriates and Keralites from other States began returning home, almost all of the positive cases of COVID-19 reported daily are imported cases of infection. However, the number of cases reported through local transmission has also been on the rise.
The number of recoveries reported on Tuesday is 34, taking the number of active cases in the State to 1,231. The cumulative number of COVID-19 cases so far is 2,096 and the number of persons recovered is 848.
An official release from the Health Department said 2,00,642 persons had newly come into the State since May 4 from abroad and other States by flight, road and sea.
The State has kept 2,04,153 persons under COVID-19 surveillance and quarantine now. While 1,913 persons who exhibited mild symptoms are isolated in various hospitals in districts, the rest are all under home or institutional quarantine. On Tuesday, 269 hospital admissions were reported in the State.
Testing increased
Having increased diagnostic testing in a major way in the last 24 hours, 3,813 samples were tested. Till date, 95,397 samples have been tested, apart from the sentinel surveillance samples numbering 22,855 done in priority groups amongst the population.
Even as the State is trying to check local transmission, more regions are being designated as hotspots on a daily basis. On Tuesday, 10 new regions from Kasaragod and Thrissur entered the said list, taking the total to 158.