Saying that he is aware of a demand by the local chapter of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) to declare a public health emergency in the State following widespread Covid-19 infection, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has emphasised it is too early to do so.
The IMA had pointed to the skyrocketing trend in test positivity rate that touched 13.9 per cent (on Tuesday), and demanded that the Covid-19 protocols be strictly enforced through adherence to social distancing along with the use of masks and sanitisers.
Tighter coordination called for
In the last 28 days, Covid-19 infection has been confirmed in more than one lakh people in the State, which calls for a systematic coordination between various departments to tackle the emerging situation in an efficient manner, the IMA Kerala chapter said.
“There is a lack of effective coordination between various departments. A coordination committee should be formed by onboarding professional organisations such as the IMA,” it said. Another major demand aired was the need for scaling up of diagnostic tests in the State.
This is because only testing and isolating the infected can a community spread be avoided. In IMA’s view, testing numbers need to be raised to at least one lakh a day from the current levels of just above 50,000. Real-time data of beds, ICUs, ventilators available needs to be published.
Raise testing numbers to a lakh
On Tuesday, the State reported 7,354 new cases of Covid-19 after testing 52,755 samples, taking the cumulative case burden to 1,87,276. The test positivity rate remains at a record high of 13.9 per cent. The number of recoveries reported on the day was 3,420.
With total recoveries reported till Tuesday at 1,24,688, the number of active patients at present is 61,791, the Chief Minister said at a routine Covid-19 briefing in Thiruvananthapuram. Of these, 389 are critically ill and being treated in ICUs and another 94 on ventilator support.
Toll beyond 700, and counting
The State’s Covid death toll went up to 720 on Wednesday morning. As many as 97 per cent of the cases reported on Tuesday were due to local transmission. Malappuram district in the North (1,040 cases) has outpaced Thiruvananthapuram in the South (935) as the hub of daily new cases.
Case fatality ratio (deaths from every 100 infected) at 0.4 per cent is about the only redeeming feature in what the Chief Minister described as a potentially dangerous situation. Tests per million too has logged in at a decent 81,483 per million which only revealed the gravity of the situation.