Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday urged the Union government to allocate more COVID-19 vaccine doses for the state. During a video conference held by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Pinarayi Vijayan sought 60 lakh doses of vaccine for the months of July and August and said that a letter in this regard had already been sent to the Prime Minister on July 11.
"Till now, 1.17 crore people in the state received the first dose of vaccines while 44.18 lakh people received both doses. The state has also arranged special vaccination drives at mental health centres, old age homes and for tribal communities, bed-ridden patients and the transgender community," CM said. Over the past seven days (between July 9 and July 15), Kerala, on average, has been administering 59,434 first doses and 96,073 second doses.
Pinarayi Vijayan explained to Prime Minister Narendra Modi the steps taken by the state government to mitigate the effects of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kerala is one of the states with high cases of COVID-19. During the meeting, the CM said the Delta variant was found in the state during the second wave, which began in April, and during that period, the test positivity rate (percentage of people testing positive for the virus in a group of people) reached almost 30%.
"Currently, the test positivity rate has come down to 10.4%. When compared to other states, the first wave started late in Kerala. We tried to delay the peak, which helped the health sector," he said. The Chief Minister said the state followed the testing, quarantine and treatment protocol, and has one of the lowest case mortality rates in the country. “Even though other states have high mortality rates, we managed our case mortality rate at 0.48%,” the CM said.
With 13,750 patients testing positive for coronavirus on Friday, July 16, Kerala's total active COVID-19 cases stand at 1.21 lakh. For the past many weeks, the state has been daily reporting between 10,000 and 13,000 cases. Experts, including the Indian Medical Association, have been stating that the state needs to revamp its COVID-19 regulation strategy.