COVID-19 Onam effect after two weeks: CM

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has warned the public not to be fooled by the comparatively low COVID-19 cases reported in the State in the past two days as the Onam effect on disease transmission will become evident only after two weeks.

Briefing media here on Thursday, Mr. Vijayan pointed out that the testing numbers had dropped in the past three or four days as the festive mood prompted many people to stay away from testing. While the test numbers were low, the test positivity rate has been quite high and has gone up to 8%, he said.

Hence, new clusters and a higher disease transmission rate might become evident in the next few days. He appealed to the public to maintain high vigil, to protect themselves at the individual level and to take precautions such as wearing masks and physical distancing as a ‘social vaccine’ till the real vaccine came along.

He said that even though many shops and malls had exercised great restraint during Onam and had restricted crowds, absolutely no controls were maintained in some quarters.

Though shops had been asked to maintain the names and addresses of all visitors, this had not properly been observed. In this context, a model adopted by Kozhikode, that of a QR code scanning system, had been found to be quite successful.

All visitors to shops are asked to scan a QR code displayed in the shop, so that all information is electronically registered. If at all there is a risk of a COVID-19 outbreak, all these visitors would be given an alert. This system can be tried elsewhere too, Mr. Vijayan said.