Kerala reported 85 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday. Sixty one of these patients are those who have recently returned from other countries and states. The source of infection of 10 patients is through contact, while four others who tested positive for the coronavirus are health workers.
This has put the total number of people under treatment for COVID-19 in Kerala at 1,342, with 46 recoveries also being reported on Saturday. There have been 2,407 confirmed cases in the state so far, including the 1,045 recoveries.
Only four new cases of COVID-19 have been reported from Thrissur district on Saturday, a significant reduction since the last two days when it had reported 39 cases. District authorities had increased the containment zones on Friday, allowing only essential services in the area.
The most number of active cases now is in Malappuram, with 205 patients under treatment for COVID-19. Palakkad comes next with 176 active cases and Thrissur now has 151 patients being treated for the disease. Kannur and Kasargod also have more than a hundred active cases with 128 and 101 each, closely followed by Alappuzha with 98, Kollam with 91 and Kozhikode with 90 cases each.
There are 85 active cases in Pathanamthitta where the second wave of the disease had begun in early March. Ernakulam, Thiruvananthapuram and Kottayam have 63, 60 and 48 cases respectively. Idukki has 26 cases and Wayanad, which had for the longest time maintained zero cases, now has 20.
There are now 2,35,418 people under observation for the disease in various districts. Out of these, 2,33,429 are in home or institutional quarantine. The remaining 1,989 are in hospitals.
The number of people testing positive had been going up since the borders to the state opened last month. By Saturday, 2,32,539 people have reached the state from other countries and states, through airport, sea port, railways and check posts.
Testing has also been done increasingly in light of the spike in cases in recent weeks. In the last 24 hours, 5,170 samples were tested. So far, samples of 1,09,729 people have been sent for testing. As part of the sentinel surveillance the state has been doing to test health workers, migrant labourers and others who have a large number of social interactions, 29,790 samples have been collected. Out of these, the results of 27,899 samples were negative. All tests included (routine, augmented, sentinel, pooled sentinel, CBNAAT and TrueNat), 144,842 samples have been tested so far.
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