The State’s daily case burden of COVID-19 crossed the 10,000 mark on Wednesday, to register 10,606 cases, which took the cumulative case burden to 2,53,405 cases.
The State registered this highest single day spike when the tests done in the past 24 hours were hiked to 73,816, which is again the highest number of tests to have been done in a single day.
Test positivity rate is steady at 14.3% even when tests have been hiked by over 10,000 than the previous highest test figures, indicating that community transmission is intense so that more tests would yield more cases.
The earlier projections had speculated that the State would record over 10,000 cases daily when the epidemic curve reached the peak. However, going by the current trends, the epidemic peak could be many more weeks away, it is believed.
The State recorded the highest number of hospital discharges in a single day on Wednesday when 6,161 people were reported to have recovered from the disease.
With a total of 1,60,253 persons having recovered till date, the burden of active cases is inching towards the one-lakh mark. The number of persons currently undergoing treatment is 92,161.
Among the active cases, the number of patients who are critically ill and are being treated in ICUs jumped to 610, with another 179 requiring ventilator support.
The death toll rose to 906, with 22 more deaths. Thiruvananthapuram accounted for 14 of these deaths, Malappuram five and Idukki, Alappuzha and Kollam recording one case each.
In the new cases, 97.9% or 10,387 cases are locally acquired infections, of which 741 cases are yet to be linked to a known source of infection. The new cases also include the infections reported in 98 health-care workers.
Among districts, four districts registered over a 1,000 cases, with Kozhikode registering the highest number of cases at 1,576, Malappuram 1,350, Ernakulam 1,201 and Thiruvananthapuram 1,182 cases.
Thrissur has 948 cases, Kollam 852, Alappuzha 672, Palakkad 650, Kannur 602, Kottayam 490, Kasaragid 432, Pathanamthitta 393, Wayanad 138 and Idukki 120.
When the number of active cases are considered, Thiruvananthapuram is still leading with 12,867 cases. The sudden surge in cases in all other districts has resulted in 12,267 cases in Ernakulam and 11,161 cases in Kozhikode. Kollam is next with 8,596 cases, where the surge is worrisome and is likely to go beyond the system’s capacity.
The number of hotspots at present is 720.