The emerging COVID-19 situation in Kerala has now begun to resemble the situation in any major metropolis in the country with the pace of disease transmission in the community surpassing all efforts at containment, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said.

The pace at which a superspreader event had transmitted the disease fast and wild across three urban wards in the capital city was an indication how fast the disease could spread across a small and densely populated State such as Kerala, he said here on Friday.

Till Friday, the huge number of cases reported daily was on account of imported cases, reported in people coming from abroad or other parts of the country.

But on Friday, the picture reversed for the first time, with cases from the community due to local transmission overtaking the number of imported cases, a clear indication of how the epidemic will progress in the coming days.

Of the 416 new COVID-19 cases reported, 242 were cases of local transmission, while the imported cases of infection were 174. The disease is spreading across the camps of para military forces in the State with 35 personnel of the Indo Tibetan Border Police in Alappuzha district, two jawans of the BSF in Thrissur and one CISF jawan in Kannur testing positive.

With 112 recoveries being reported, the number of active cases undergoing treatment in hospitals now is 3,099. The cumulative number of cases reported ever since the outbreak began is poised to touch the 7,000 mark, at 6,950 cases, of which, 3,822 persons have recovered from the disease.

Capital tops again

For the second day, the maximum number of fresh cases, 129, was reported from Thiruvananthapuram district, of which 122 are “contact” cases which were acquired through local transmission. The number of patients currently undergoing treatment in the district has also suddenly galloped to 450, with a majority of the mild and asymptomatic cases being treated at first line treatment centres.

Mr. Vijayan said the government would prefer to focus on increasing testing and expanding the current treatment facilities to accommodate the surge in patients. He said that of the total cases, the proportion of cases through local transmission had gone up from 5.11% on June 27 to 20.64% in a matter of two weeks.

He said the seriousness of the crisis should be clearly understood and that no government could move forward with effective containment activities unless the people cooperated with the authorities concerned and strictly maintained physical distancing and universal masking policies.

The number of persons currently under surveillance is over 1.84 lakh, of whom, 3,517 with COVID-like symptoms are isolated in hospitals

The number of hotspots in the State now is 194.