Kerala reported 5,960 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, when 64,908 samples were tested in the past 24 hours.
Test positivity rate on the day was 9.18%, clearly indicating that it would take much longer before Kerala’s epidemic curve flattens. The cumulative case burden of the State has risen to 8,42,843 cases.
The active case pool of the State has been going up slowly since the past few days and now stands at 68,416. With 5,011 persons reported to have recovered from the disease, the cumulative recoveries have risen to 7,70,768.
The addition of 27 new deaths on Saturday to the official list of COVID fatalities has taken the State’s toll ever since the pandemic began to 3,442 deaths.
Kozhikode reported six deaths, Kannur five, Thiruvananthapuram, Alappuzha and Ernakulam three each, Kottayam and Pathanamthitta two each while one death each was reported Wayanad, Palakkad and Thrissur.
The number of critically ill COVID-19 patients in the State who are currently being treated in ICUs in various hospitals in the State is 765 on Saturday, according to official reports, with 228 of them requiring ventilator assistance.
Of the 5,960 new cases, in 87 cases, the Health Department has reported a history of travel outside the State while 5,873 are locally acquired infections. In 394 cases the source of infection remains untraced while the number of healthcare workers who acquired the infection is 53
Among districts, Ernakulam continues to report the highest number of cases in the State with 1,046 cases, Kozhikode 722, Kottayam 552, Malappuram 489, Pathanamthitta 487, Kollam 445, Thrissur 421, Thiruvananthapuram 377, Alappuzha 355, Palakkad 348, Wayanad 238, Kannur 207, Idukki 181 and Kasaragod 92 cases.
A total of 56 persons who reached the State from the U.K. have so far tested COVID-19 positive, of whom the samples of nine had the presence of the variant first reported in the U.K., which is believed to be highly transmissible.