Kerala reported 65 new COVID-19 cases and 57 recoveries on a single day on Wednesday, holding down the number of active cases in hospitals at 1,239, just seven more than the previous day’s figure.

Senior health officials said that this was exactly what they were banking on: that a good turnover in the number of recoveries would stabilise the total number of active cases in hospitals at a time and prevent the health system from being overwhelmed.

Early detection, isolation and treatment of COVID-19 patients have more or less ensured that the number of patients developing respiratory distress and complications, requiring ICU care, is kept at a minimum in the State’s COVID care hospitals.

Officials pointed out that almost all the COVID deaths reported in the State so far were patients who had been brought to the hospitals after the symptoms were well established, after which the disease progression is quite fast.

Of the cumulative caseload of 2,161, there have been 905 recoveries so far.

Death toll 17

With the Health Department officially confirming that the death of a 87-year-old male in Thrissur on Sunday night (the patient who had been undergoing treatment at a private hospital had been shifted to Government Medical College Hospital, Thrissur, after he tested positive for SARS-CoV-2) was indeed due to the disease, the deaths toll now stands at 17.

Of the 65 new cases reported on Wednesday, except for five cases the rest are all imported cases of infection. Thirty-four cases were detected in persons who had returned from abroad while 25 had come from other States. Five persons are believed to have acquired the infection through local transmission through contact with a known/unknown source of infection.

In various districts, the State has put under surveillance and quarantine, a total of 2,10,592 persons, out of whom, 1,844 are isolated in hospitals and the rest on home or institutional quarantine.

An official release said that 4,689 samples were tested in the last 24 hours. The cumulative number of routine samples done so far is 98,304, while another 24,508 samples were tested as part of sentinel surveillance.

The total number of hotspots in the State now is 163, with five more areas in Malappuram and Kottayam entering the list.