Kerala’s cumulative burden of COVID-19 rose to 6,31,615 cases with 5,848 new cases being reported on Saturday when 60,503 samples were tested in the past 24 hours.
Test positivity rate remained below 10 at 9.67%. Recoveries were reported to be 5,820 and the active case pool in the State now stands at 61,393. Till date, the State has reported 5,67,694 recoveries. Even when the case graph plateaued and the active case pool went down by over 35,000 cases in the month of November, the State’s mortality figures have not shown a similar dip. Even when the State’s COVID case fatality rate has remained well below 1%, the pandemic has been steadily claiming the elderly and those with serious co-morbidities, whose numbers are not so insignificant.
On Saturday too, 32 new deaths were added to the official COVID death list, taking the State’s COVID toll to 2,390. Thrissur accounted for 10 deaths, Ernakulam and Kozhikode five, Thiruvananthapuram three, Malappuram two while Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Palakkad and Wayanad reported one death each. Of the 5,848 new cases reported on Saturday, 5,795 were contact cases with no epidemiological link found in 613 cases. In 53 cases, a history of travel has been reported. The number of positive healthcare workers was 45.
Among districts, Malappuram has been consistently reporting the maximum new cases in the past few weeks and reported 920 cases on Saturday. Kozhikode has 688, Ernakulam 665, Kottayam 567, Thrissur 536, Kollam 405, Palakkad 399, Alapuzha 365, Thiruvananthapuram 288, Kannur 280, Wayanad 258, Pathanamthitta 208, Idukki 157 and Kasaragod 12 cases.