Kerala’s coronavirus (COVID-19) case graph took another leap on Saturday, when 11,755 new cases were recorded, after testing 66,228 samples. The test positivity rate rose to a new high of 17.7%.
Among patients with active infection, 660 were in ICUs, with another 189 requiring ventilator support.
There were 23 more deaths added from mortality in the past few weeks. Thiruvananthapuram registered nine of these deaths, Ernakulam eight, Kannur and Kollam two each and Palakkad and Malappuram one death each.
Locally acquired infections constituted 98% of new cases on Saturday.
Malappuram district with 1,632 cases and Kozhikode with 1,324 pushed Thiruvananthapuram, which added 1,310 cases, to third place.
Telangana’s positive cases continued to be in the 1,800 to 1,900 range for the third day on Friday, with 1,811 detected during the day. There were 1,891 cases the previous day and 1,896 on Wednesday.
Barring Tuesday, when 2,154 cases were recorded, the incidence dropped below 2,000 over the last eight days. On October 1, 2,008 cases were reported.
With another nine COVID-19-related deaths, total fatalities rose to 1,217.
The number of active cases on Friday were 26,104 including 21,551 in home or institutional isolation and 4,553 under treatment in the government and private hospitals.
Testing on Friday covered 50,469 samples. The samples tested per million ratio touched 94,046.
Andhra Pradesh’s case tally crossed 7.5 lakh with 5,653 new infections on Saturday.
The death toll also went up with 35 new fatalities in various districts. In the past day, 73,625 samples were tested and overall positivity rate was 11.56%.
The new cases and deaths were as follows: West Godavari district (823 and 2), Chittoor (706 and 5), East Godavari (706 and 4), Prakasam (538 and 6), Kadapa (504 and 1), Guntur (470 and 2), Krishna (468 and 4), Anantapur (351 and 2), Nellore (322 and 3), Visakhapatnam (289 and 3), Vizianagaram (194 and 0), Srikakulam (163 and 1) and Kurnool (119 and 2).
Karnataka’s total cases breached the seven lakh mark on Saturday, and the State reported 10,517 new positive cases.
With 102 more deaths, the toll also rose to 9,891. Bengaluru Urban reported 4,563 cases. Also, 30 of the 102 deaths were from this urban district.
Karnataka, which was testing over one lakh samples daily for four consecutive days, conducted a record 1,12,770 tests including 64,367 RT-PCR tests.
The State ramped up its testing from May. From 1,587 tests in March, the State conducted 3,21,115 tests till June, 7,65,945 in July and in August, 15,93,892 tests. It went up to 20,18,194 in September.
The tests per million rose from 44,099 on September 1 to 72,541 on September 30. The State started Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) in June, going up to 1,68,472 samples in July, 7,24,469 in August and 9,13,158 in September.
(With inputs from Vijayawada, Hyderabad and Bengaluru bureaus)