Kerala Health Minister Veena George on Thursday, January 27, said that 94% of the COVID-19 cases in the state are now of the Omicron variant, with the Delta variant accounting for 6%. The 14 districts in the state have been classified into three categories with Category C as worst-affected.
On Thursday, Kottayam, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, and Idukki districts were added to the list, which earlier had only Thiruvananthapuram. In these districts, no public functions are allowed and gyms, theatres, and swimming pools should not open.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, 51,739 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the state and the test positivity rate stood at 44.60%. At present there are 3,09,489 active COVID-19, of which 3.6% are admitted at hospitals.
The Health Minister told the media that cases in the coming weeks are expected to go up and remain high for about three weeks, after which they would taper off. "The utilisation of ICU beds at the state-run colleges on Thursday was less by 2% and stood at 40.2% of all beds for both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 cases. Likewise, ICU ventilator use was just 13.5%. At the private hospitals, ICU beds occupancy was just 8.22% while the ventilator usage was 8.96%," she said.
Meanwhile, state Education Minister V Sivankutty told the media that offline classes will be held only for students of Classes 10 to 12, while all other classes will be held online. He also said teachers and non-teaching staff should come to the school everyday.
On Thursday, the Union government said that as per early indication, the number of COVID-19 cases in some places seems to be plateauing. However, the trend needs to be studied further, Lav Agarwal, the Joint Secretary of the Health Ministry, said. He added that Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, and Rajasthan were recording a high number of COVID-19 cases and positivity. "Top 10 states in terms of active cases contribute to more than 77% of the total active cases in the country. Over 90% of these active cases are under home isolation, indicating mild to moderate clinical severity," Agarwal said.